


Mission 2: Turnabout's Fair Play

by deathrae



Series: The Man from D.A.R.K.N.E.S.S. [2]
Category: Kingdom Hearts, 逆転裁判 | Gyakuten Saiban | Ace Attorney
Genre: (but then again isn't that the whole AA franchise), Alternate Universe - Spies & Secret Agents, F/M, genre-appropriate violence for a Bond movie, heavy creative license with the legal system, heavy use of firearms, the spies/lawyers crossover you never knew you needed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-21
Updated: 2018-06-28
Packaged: 2019-05-26 11:59:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 29,649
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15000434
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deathrae/pseuds/deathrae
Summary: In the wake of the Bern mission that they barely got out of in one piece and just before Agent T can be re-approved for duty, he is caught standing over the Master's dead body.Someone wants him to hang for it, and Agent A and her team must rely on the help of two hotshot American lawyers to make sure he doesn't...





	1. Manchester

**Author's Note:**

  * For [vintageAerith](https://archiveofourown.org/users/vintageAerith/gifts).



> It used to be I thought I'd never write complex genere-changing AUs. THEN I thought "Yeah, but I'll never write a crossover."
> 
> And yet, here we are. Happy birthday, VintageAerith. You're the BEST.

If you went a ways outside town, followed a few rural roads, and ignored a few Private Property signs—which was a dangerous endeavor and not one that anyone in the know would ever advise or support, as ignoring the Private Property and No Trespassing signs could actually get you shot, killed, or arrested, or a combination thereof—you would find a barracks-slash-training compound for an intelligence agency. Unlike most of the Nation’s _other_ intelligence agencies, though, on paper, this one didn’t exist.

The compound, better known to its inhabitants as “The Castle,” sprawled across a few clustered hills and the valleys between. It had no true, visible fence, but was edged with watchtowers that overlooked the surrounding fields and roads.

Agent T’s room was on the third floor, along an outer wall that overlooked a creek, a distant country highway, a far-off hill, and the long swooping strings of power lines. He opened the window and hung his head out for a moment, peering up at the sky. Clear, little chance of rain, though the forecasters were calling for it in the evening. He pulled himself back in and limped to his bureau. He opened the top drawer, bypassing the loaded handgun tucked under his socks, and tugged out a shirt. He was slated for a meeting with Agent A and the Director later, and with the lingering pain of the gunshot wound he’d taken to the leg, he’d been leaving himself extra time to get anywhere. He was still consuming a rather ridiculous quantity of painkillers, too, the background noise of his own thoughts dulled to a soft buzzing.

Someone knocked on his door just as he finished tucking in his shirt.

“It’s open,” he said.

The Master, a tall man who T had always assumed was somewhere between 40 and 55, opened the door and stepped inside. The dark, jagged scars on his face drew T’s attention first, as usual, then the cold grey of his eyes, then the folder in his hand.

Something was wrong. T wasn’t sure what. But something was jangling along his nerves, playing his vertebrae like a xylophone of warning bells.

“Sir,” he said, and saluted.

“Agent.” The Master paced the length of the room, taking in the tidy chaos of his desk, the haphazard stack of papers in T’s inbox, and the disheveled mushroom cloud of discarded clothes in the corner that far exceeded the standard occupancy limits of his hamper.

“I... was under the impression I would be meeting with you later, sir. I apologize, I wasn’t expecting to see you now. Uh. Here.”

The Master nodded absently, looking out the window. He had his hands tucked together behind his back with the folder in his fingers. “I understand. I apologize for coming unannounced, but I wanted to discuss something with you. Privately.”

“Of course, sir.”

“This,” he said, gesturing with the folder, “Is the results of Agent Valentin’s evaluation.”

T waited, biting down the urge to ask what it said.

“I have been advised to approve him for a return to duty.”

“That’s excellent news, sir.”

The Master shot him an acidic look, cold and alien in its hatred.

“...isn’t it?”

The Master sneered and looked away. “I need you to understand. An agent that can be flipped once can always be flipped again.”

“I’m aware, sir, but Valentin was subjected to very unique extenuating circumstances—”

“Enough.”

T froze, taking the command like a slap to the face. “ _Sir_.”

The Master shook the folder at him. “Don’t throw her words at me. Speak with your own mouth or don’t speak at all.”

T held his tongue.

“Circumstances notwithstanding, you need to realize that anything is possible at this point. We don’t know that we have, or even _can_ , fully remove the toxins used to flip Valentin the first time.”

“Is that why he’s still comatose?” T asked, the question bursting out of him like an alien thing, angry and too bold.

“Who’s to say there isn’t additional programming?” The Master’s eyes weren’t quite focused and his voice was arctic. He was recalling something else. Valentin, T realized in a sudden, cold burst of clarity, was not the first agent the Master had lost. What more was going on that he wasn’t saying? “Who’s to say it couldn’t be reactivated at any time? Who’s to say he didn’t willingly agree to it?”

T stepped forward, frustrated. “I really don’t think you’re being reasonable about this—”

“To hell with _reasonable_ , man, this is a damn war!”

T recoiled again, inhaling slowly. “Sir—”

“I needed to know whose side you would be on if the time came.”

“ _Sir_.”

“It seems I have my answer.”

The Master tossed the folder at the ground. T frowned, looking at the papers sliding free across the floor and not at the Master. He stepped forward to gather up the report, and stepped directly into a fist that struck him in the gut.

He wheezed and staggered back.

They scuffled.

The Master was bigger, heavier, stronger. Unwounded.

T was very well-trained, by both A and the Master himself. For every two hits to T's ribs and gut and jaw and throbbing, healing thigh, he got one good strike to the Master's neck or the vulnerable meat between bones. The room was a quiet chorus of pained exhales and T’s ragged breath, coarse and choppy with pain. For every clumsy step toward his bureau and his gun hidden within it, the Master moved to block him, as if he knew where it was.

_Of course he knew where it was_.

The Master pulled a knife.

He couldn’t understand why this had become a fight for his life.

T took the blade first in the meat of his shoulder, then took it away. He delivered a series of blows and precise jabs. Elbow. Wrist. Back of the hand where the nerve is easiest to jam. The Master's fingers fell loose and T closed blood-slick fingers around the knife. He could feel his blood pulsing under the hole in his shoulder, leaking onto his shirt.

He didn’t waste breath on words, though there were dozens skidding around his brain. _Stop. Why are you doing this. I’ve already proven I’m not a traitor. So has V. **Stop this**._

He heard a sound, like a distant pop. The distinctive metallic _thump_ of a gunshot.

There was a crack of splintering wood, somewhere behind him.

The Master staggered forward, not fighting now but falling.

Perhaps he was a fool. But all the same, T stepped forward, bent his healing knee, and let the Master stagger into his arms. He stooped, slowly lowering the Master to the ground. He stumbled to the window, but there was no one in sight. He didn’t bother scrambling for binoculars—by now whoever it was would have ducked well out of sight and would be in as much cover as humanly possible.

“Dammit.”

He returned to the Master and knelt down to listen to his chest. Nothing.

Somewhere in the hall outside he heard the rapid stomping of boots. He looked up, relieved, and gingerly got back up as three armed guards stormed into the room.

“I need a perimeter search and eyes on the hill past the highw—hey!”

One of the guards, rifle in hand, slammed him against the wall. T swore on impact but stood still.

“Check him for vitals,” one of them said. He wasn’t sure which—their helmets and radio-chatter-voices made it hard to track.

“Nothing. Hear that, Command? We’ve got the Master D.O.A.”

T squirmed. His leg ached. “Listen, let me go, we can still get the guy who—” A baton hit him hard in the gut and knocked out all his air.

“Quiet.”

The one who’d reported in was quiet for a moment, then nodded. “Subject is in custody. It looks ugly in here, sir. Blood everywhere, knife. Get forensics up here soon as possible.”

The xylophone player was back. “I’m not—I didn’t do this, let me go—”

“Shut up.”

Someone spun him around and dragged his hands together. His cheek pressed to the wall as he was handcuffed. On the floor was V’s evaluation.

From the top page gleamed the Master’s handwriting and personal seal.

_Approved for duty_.

Blood had smeared across the pages, giving V’s ID picture a macabre tint.

 

Agent A, still sporting the trendy “wrapped in bandages and slightly high on painkillers” look from her _last_ offsite mission, eyed the folding chair L had grudgingly provided for her. At his frown, she perched in it like a hummingbird, sitting in front of the desk in his underground bunker office. Well, _office_ was rather generous a term. More so it was a glorified work station.

It had been weeks since Bern, but whatever Shatterheart had dosed her with there had been taxing her body’s ability to heal. Add to that the fact that one of the little brat’s shots at T had ricocheted and hit her in the shoulder while she’d been unconscious on the floor, and it was fair to say that she was having a rough time of it.

“I don’t have to tell you that this is bad,” L said.

A gave him a somewhat unamused look and gestured to herself. She didn’t look great either. Now was either the best or worst time for _this is bad_.

“Yeah yeah.” L shoved his bangs back, showing ruddy brown roots, then tugged irritably at the back of his ponytail. “Well, the short version is, the Master is dead, and T’s been blamed for it after having been found literally with blood on his hands. Not to mention on the knife, the floor, the walls...” L reached into a desk drawer for his pack of cigarettes. “He’s currently being held for questioning, and his bail is. Well. Let’s just say it would pay the salary of every person who works in this bunker. For two years.”

A rubbed the bridge of her nose. “Right. So no dice there.”

“Not likely, no. My guess is they think he’s got some offshore accounts to post bail.”

K, L’s assistant-slash-coworker, approached with an ominous stack of paper cradled in her arms, and leaned against L’s desk.

“So,” A said to recap, “We don’t know why bail’s set so high other than a guess, and we’ve got no indication of why the Master even went to T’s room.”

“Nope.”

“Or what they discussed.”

“Not a word.”

“And let me guess, we’re also missing the surveillance footage.”

“Winner winner, chicken dinner,” K cut in, her voice grimly bewildered. “Someone hacked the systems and pulled that data within maybe a _minute_ of the Master’s death. Inside job, maybe?”

A sighed. She had never wanted a drink more than she did in this moment. In fact she might’ve just gone and gotten one, if mixing booze and painkillers wasn’t liable to put her so out of her mind that she got herself or someone else killed out of simple negligence.

“On the plus side,” L said, and slid an unlit cigarette into his mouth, where it stayed. K would’ve smacked him if he’d lit it underground, and he had at least that much self-preservation. Which was saying a lot, for a man with purple teardrop tattoos.

The look A leveled on him was as icily unamused as it was exhausted. “How the hell is there a plus side after an assassination and _another_ security breach on your servers?”

“I’ve got him a pair of really good attorneys?”

“They have an excellent record for false accusations of murder,” K said, handing part of her paper stack to A. “And they’ve been given clearance to have a look at most of what you two have been up to. The exact details are in the packet.”

“You’ve got a meeting with them at lunch,” L said.

“Usual name?” A asked, flipping through the packet she’d been handed.

K laughed, incongruously, and A frowned at her. “Artemis?” she asked. “Yeah. Go with that one.”

“Okay,” A said slowly, not sure what to make of that response. “I’m off then. Thanks for your help, L.”

“We’ll get him back,” L said, and the sobriety in his voice made her pause.

She nodded. “Yeah. We will.”


	2. Liverpool

“They look like _children_ ,” A said grouchily into the mic under her collar.

K laughed softly in her earpiece. “Yeah, I know. Seems like that’s a trend recently.”

“Cartoon-colored babies with law degrees?”

“I was going to say ‘bright young prodigies entering the justice system,’ but, sure, let’s go with that.”

A sighed and levered herself out of the car, turning back only long enough to slap several bills into the cabbie’s expectantly extended hand. She tugged her coat into place and waited while the car sped off. The rain, which had started the night before and continued into the morning, had finally stopped. The clouds remained, offering present gloom and threats of a future reprisal. It did a rather good job of mirroring her mood.

The lawyers she had been promised, according to the folder now tucked under her arm, were Americans. One Apollo Justice and one Athena Cykes, attorneys at law.

K’s laughter had made a great deal more sense once she’d started reading.

“You’ve got it all ready, K?”

“Mm.”

A lurked for another minute in her spot across the street before biting the bullet and crossing, her boots thumping into puddles as she went. She gave the hostess a brief nod and walked directly up to the lawyers’ table. They were bent over a stack of files, briefcases shoved under their chairs, arguing in hushed voices about the contents of the paperwork they’d been delivered.

Athena looked up first, smiling the way only a young woman with too many secrets could smile and generally beaming like the sun. She stood and extended a hand. “Good morning! I assume you’re our client?”

Apollo, with tired eyes and a hairstyle that would have seemed absurd if not for T’s own medicine cabinet shelf of gravity-defying hair products, frowned at his partner. “We’ve been over this. Our client is detained under a frankly unreasonably heavy bail. We’ll see him later. This is...” He trailed off meaningfully, waiting until A had shaken Athena’s hand to do the same.

“Artemis Soldati,” she said, gripping his hand a bit tighter than was entirely necessary. He matched her pressure, and she frowned, nodding after a moment in satisfaction.

Apollo squinted. “Artemis?” he asked. “Are you pulling our leg, ma’am?”

A sat down in the third chair at the table. “I assure you, the coincidence is as absurd to me as it is to you.”

Satisfied for the moment, he sat down and glanced at Athena.

“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Artemis,” Athena said brightly, pushing some of the folders into her briefcase to clear the space. “Coffee?”

“No, thank you,” A said, giving a thin smile. She shifted, trying to find a comfortable spot in her chair. Her shoulder ached.

Apollo tapped a pen against a form in front of him and pressed a finger between his eyebrows. “So. What can you tell us about this case?”

A shifted and tamped down her discomfort before it could show on her face. She rubbed knuckles into her shoulder, trying to get it to behave. The bandages under her shirt itched in protest.

“For starters, I trust T—Thrasos,” she added, recalling what his codename had been on their Bern registration. “With my life. He wouldn’t have killed our employer.” She kept a dismal thought of _unless directly threatened_ to herself. The idea that the Master himself had somehow been flipped was inane.

“Your employer,” Apollo said, flipping through forms. “Director Erik Hemming?”

She blinked. _Erik?_ Was that his real name? Seriously?

“The victim, yes.”

Apollo nodded, and she breathed a tiny sigh of relief. She resolved to give K hell for the fact that none of her reports referred to the Master by name. Title aside, the man was dead. Some secrets just didn’t go with you entirely to the grave, even in their line of work.

“And what was it that you and... Thrasos, was it, did for Mr. Hemming?”

Athena, A noticed, was watching her with interest, and keeping startlingly quiet. Apollo scribbled notes in the margins of his paperwork. When A didn’t answer right away, he looked up from his page, the spikes of his hair drooping forward like the interested ears of a dog.

“That’s a somewhat complex question, Mr. Justice,” A said, keeping her voice level. “I trust you’ve signed your release forms?”

He looked vaguely ill. “Uh... yes ma’am.”

He said it the way only Americans did, like something out of a cowboy movie, but he somehow made it sound endearing. She turned her attention to Athena, who jumped at being suddenly scrutinized, the necklace at the hollow of her throat briefly turning yellow.

_Interesting_.

“And you, Ms. Cykes?”

Athena glanced to Apollo. “Uh. Yes.”

A chuckled and slowly stood from her chair, rolling her aching shoulder.

She didn’t have to look behind her to know that the quiet crunch of tires on gravel was the car K had ordered for them.

“Won’t you join me for a drive?” A asked, smiling her most dashing smile. “I don’t like open areas much. Too easy to eavesdrop.”

The lawyers shared a skittish glance. Strangely, a part of A felt almost nostalgic to see it. She missed T, missed those glances full of entire conversations no one else could parse.

“Alright, Ms. Soldati,” Apollo said slowly, sliding the rest of his forms into his briefcase.

“Oh, please,” she said, hopping over the decorative wrought iron fence at her back and opening the car door for them. “Just call me Artemis.”

 

The interior of the Agency car was warm, soft, and much more comfortable than the taxi she’d taken to get to the café. She sat facing the lawyers, who looked subtly displeased by the arrangement.

“So,” she said. “Your forms cleared you for detailed intel regarding the actions of the Agency led by Director Erik Hemming. And you are, I hope, quite aware that by signing those forms you are bound to the terms therein, up to and including an oath of temporary allegiance to the Crown, and accepting the charges should you renege on the terms of that form and share confidential information that will be revealed to you as you represent my partner in court. Charges which may include disclosure of state secrets and assistance rendered to a foreign state or foreign organization or their representatives, to the detriment of the external security of this nation. These, it goes without saying, are the summation of charges known colloquially as treason. Furthermore, you accept that you will, in accordance with these charges and future but hypothetical legal proceedings, be subject to investigation and, if that investigation ends in determination of your guilt, the subsequent penalties of those crimes, up to and including execution. Are you sufficiently informed upon the terms I have explained?”

Apollo had gone well past looking vaguely ill to full out queasy.

“Is this entirely necessary Ms. Artemis?”

“Yes.”

Athena shuddered faintly and wrung her fingers together. Her necklace was flickering colors now and then. “Then, yes, we’ve been sufficiently informed.”

“Good,” A said brightly, and allowed herself to relax, ever so slightly.

K’s voice was crackly over the speaker. “A, stop harassing them. They signed, they’re loyal. At least loyal enough for our sake. They want the best for T.”

Athena stiffened, and incomprehensibly, the necklace at her collarbone spoke in a tinny, piercing tone. “ _Wait, who’s T?”_

A narrowed her eyes, and Athena hastily covered her necklace with a hand.

“Oh my god,” she breathed, just as Apollo buried his face in his hands.

“Are you _kidding_ me,” he groaned.

A sighed and pressed a finger to her earpiece. “K, I’ll catch you up later.”

K was quiet for a moment, and then the speaker crackled. “Sure _._ ”

A disengaged the device and watched the lawyers. Apollo seemed perfectly content to remain buried in his palms, while Athena was hastily looking just about everywhere else but at A’s face.

“So. _Before_ I start sharing confidential information, how about you explain who you’re wired to?”

Athena’s voice burst out of her like a spray of buckshot as her necklace went a dark blue, which A filed away along with the earlier yellow.

“No! _Dios_ , no, there’s no wire. I swear. Widget just um. Shares my thoughts? On occasion?” A raised an eyebrow. “He grants me detailed insight into witnesses’ thoughts and emotions,” she added hastily.

A hummed, thoughtful. “So what you’re telling me is, you’re _amazing_ at poker.”

Apollo snorted into his hands. “Assuming Widget doesn’t announce her hand, yeah.”

Athena flushed and slapped his shoulder. “Shut up!”

“You can breathe,” A said, smirking. She rubbed her knuckles into her shoulder again. “The car would have negated any outbound signals.”

“A test, then,” Apollo grumbled, finally resurfacing from his fingers like a drowning sailor.

“Something like that.”

His eyes flicked to her shoulder and she dropped her hand.

“Are you alright?” he asked, with an air of blasé disinterest that she didn’t buy for a second.

“It’s fine,” she said.

He flinched. Looked at his partner. Athena raised her eyebrows, mimicking A’s earlier expression.

“The truth this time, Artemis? Lawyer-client relationships must be built on trust, after all. That doesn’t only go one way.”

A allowed herself a very small frown. “You are _very_ bold, as young as you are.”

Athena grinned and lounged back in her seat. Apollo gave her an irritated look, communicating more with his eyes than with his mouth as Athena mused, “That’s us. Bold.”

“Tell me something, before we go any further,” A said, interrupting their unspoken conversation.

“Mm?” they said, in almost perfect unison.

“Isn’t it a breach of ethics to have two defense attorneys working together when they’re romantically involved?”

The response was immediate and, put frankly, _priceless_. Each of them turned into a spluttering mess. Athena waved her hands as Apollo slammed his fists down on his knees and tried vehemently to sell A some story she didn’t believe and honestly couldn’t really hear over Athena’s babbling, about how _ridiculous_ and _utterly outlandish_ her assertion was.

“I see,” she mused. Apollo looked about as red as Athena’s hair. Her necklace—Widget, she thought, committing the identifier to memory—kept flicking between yellow and red-flecked green, which she wasn’t sure how to read. Dark blue she took to be stress, maybe fear, but yellow?

“Anyway,” she said, politely talking over them without waiting for them to quiet down, “You asked about my shoulder.” A considered her fingernails, then smirked, her voice deliberately flat. “I was poisoned and shot in Bern, Switzerland, at the summit there several weeks ago. I tell you that primarily because it _may_ ,” she said, shooting Apollo a vaguely acidic look that made him squirm, “Have some relevance to the case.”

“Now we’re getting somewhere,” Athena muttered with a grin, digging for a notepad and pen. Her face was still pink, but she was evidently just as happy as A to move on without further acknowledging the issue. “Why’s that?”

A gave them a wry smile. “Because your client and I are paramilitary agents, of course. We work mostly in clandestine human intelligence.”

Athena slowly looked up from her pen and paper, looking somewhat alarmed. She looked at Apollo, who mirrored her expression. He shrugged, just enough that Athena could see it.

A also noticed, and smirked.

Athena looked at A again, swallowing audibly. “Okay. So _that’s_ what the Agency is?”

A laughed. “I take it back. _Together_ you’re good at poker. You only get half of it alone, is that right?”

The flush returned, darker this time.

“Ah.” Athena tapped her pen on the pad. “In a manner of speaking. So... our client. The defendant.”

“Yes.”

“He’s also a... a spy.”

A grinned, deliberately wolfish. “Of course.”

Apollo sighed. “Someday we’ll have an easy case.”

“Oh like there was any chance this was going to be easy once we saw those release forms,” Athena hissed, smacking him again. He flinched.

“ _Ouch._ ”

A waited until they returned their attention to her.

“So,” they said, in unison. Apollo hastily yielded to Athena.

“So why do you think it wasn’t him, then? If you’re spies, you’d have the means, I suppose. Well-trained combatants. Killers. Right?”

A frowned, and waited while Athena flashed her a sheepish smile and a faint _sorry_.

“That’s an accurate assessment I suppose,” A allowed, cautious. “But know this. As I said at the café, I trust him with my life. I trust his motives; I trust his agenda. Mostly because he doesn’t _have_ one. He’s more unerringly, unthinkingly loyal to the cause than any agent I know. Even _me_. He adored the...” She searched for the civilian-friendly word. “The Director. He wouldn’t have just _killed_ him.”

Not without a _damn_ good reason, anyway, she thought, but kept that to herself.

Apollo frowned, looking at Athena again, bewildered. He shrugged.

“I suppose that makes sense,” Athena said, slowly, watching Apollo’s face for hints while she spoke. “Well, um, Artemis.”

“Mm.”

“Question of the hour, I guess. When can we speak with our client?”

 

The facility where they were holding T was unlike most detention centers. For starters, it was not a true detention center. At least, not one run by municipal police. It was a drab, squat building of reinforced concrete and thick, durable-looking windows. It reminded A of a large grey bullfrog, so much so she almost expected a tongue to erupt from the thick wooden double doors in front.

Inside, the building was administratively generic. The floor was a grungy, greyish-white linoleum while the walls were a generally unattractive shade of khaki made further unattractive by the harsh glare of fluorescent bulbs high overhead. A rank of drab, squat desks lined the entry corridor, most of which were occupied by drab, squat people. Most were in shapeless dresses, or else in sweater vests and woefully unimpressive neckties. Several of the group wore glasses that had seemingly not been updated since the mid-1980s, while a handful more had the perpetual squint of someone who put down their reading lenses sometime in the last decade and still hadn’t managed to pick them up again.

A fell into step behind the two attorneys as they walked between the desks, reading name placards. They’d know better how to navigate this, she thought, until she saw a man in a suit standing against the wall by a doorway leading to another part of the building. He had the forced-casual posture and general look of someone who came from her world, not theirs, and against the clerks in the entryway he was utterly alien. His crisp suit looked professional, but affordable, his hair military in its precision and extremely short cut. His eyes were masked by a pair of sunglasses, despite being indoors. He must have recognized her, because when her gaze rested on him an extra moment, he snapped to attention, his shoes clicking together. In the close, warm air the sound was crisp and a little too loud over the dull scratching of pens and the muted clacking of old, dusty keyboards.

She tapped Apollo’s shoulder and stepped around Athena to head toward the man, making a renewed effort to hide the ache in her shoulder and camouflage the fear behind her professional smile. As she approached, he saluted, and she nodded in acknowledgement.

“We’re here to see—”

“I know who you’re here for,” the man in the suit said, with a clipped, almost hostile tone. “They may enter. You may not.”

A felt the fear drop away, replaced by iron will and a flicker of hot, red anger.

“That isn’t an option,” she said. The words were so matter of fact, so calm, that the man in the suit visibly tensed, fear playing across his expression, subtle and partially hidden by the sunglasses. But not hidden enough.

“Yes, it is,” he said. His smile was nervous, fake, but only shook once.

And to her surprise, it was _Athena_ who spoke next, cutting in with a wry chuckle. “I don’t think you actually believe that, do you, sir?”

Thank god for good ‘poker players.’

A grinned the hungry, wolfish smile she had used in the car and lightly brushed her hands over the man’s lapels, as if straightening them or dusting off invisible specks of fuzz for him. “Now. I think you know how serious these charges are, and I think you even suspect how serious the suspect’s profession is. _Which_ means that you also know that as of this morning when the paperwork was filed, these two actually have better clearance than you do, if only temporarily.”

The man in the suit’s false smile wavered again and faltered altogether.

“Which _means_ ,” she said, and leaned just a little closer. “You are not allowed to come in. They are, and I am. So I _suggest_ ,” she continued, and her tone had turned positively glacial. “That you escort us _precisely_ as far as your badge will let you, and then you will let all three of us in. I am here as their handler. _You_ are a glorified guard dog.” She looked him eye for eye through the sunglasses, never doubting he was meeting her gaze directly. “This suit looks pricey.”

His eyebrows pulled together, confused.

“Don’t give me reason to ask anyone how you managed to pay for it.”

His mouth contorted with outrage first, probably to protest that he had bought it through perfectly legal means. But before he had even made a sound, his face went ghostly pale. He realized what she had over him: _It didn’t matter_. If she tipped someone off that he _might_ have been doing something on the side, maybe selling information to people who shouldn’t have it or moving some accounts around, it wouldn’t matter that she would turn out to have given a “misguided tip.” By the time the investigation was over, he’d be signing up for every online job-search service he could find.

He pressed his lips together and gave her a stiff nod.

She patted him on the shoulder. “Good boy.”

He walked them to the elevator, then glowered as they all piled in. “Forget this,” he muttered icily, leaning in to swipe his card and hit a floor button labeled B3. He then leaned back out the door, flipping his hand up to show his middle finger.

Her hands snapped out before she’d even thought about it. She found his wrist, his elbow. She twisted the first, leaned into the second, and with just a slight shift of her weight, his face smashed into the metal doorway of the open elevator, his cheek squishing against the polished chrome and his sunglasses riding up on his face.

His elbow creaked and he swore fervently, arching away from the pressure of her hands.

“You done?” A asked.

“I’m done! I’m done!”

She released him and gave him a light shove. He stumbled out and back into the elevator lobby, then clutched at his aching shoulder. His sunglasses were askew.

She flashed him a smile and a wink, and the elevator doors slid closed.

For a moment, the car was utterly silent. The motor groaned, and they lurched downward.

“Holy _shit_!” Athena crowed. “That was fucking _amazing!”_

A jolted, having actually forgotten for a moment that the attorneys were in the elevator with her. She turned to look at them. Athena had her hands up by her face, looking outright starry-eyed, while Apollo’s expression had become something that was half guarded fear, half schadenfreude-flavored satisfaction.

“That was impressive,” he agreed, though slightly more muted than his partner.

A grinned a little, then hissed under her breath and set a hand to her bandaged shoulder. “Probably shouldn’t have done that last bit though.”

“Sure, but the way you spooked him in the lobby?” Athena said, breathless with awed delight. “That was so _badass!”_

A chuckled. “Thanks. I think.”

The floor counter ticked downward as they passed through Basement 1 and Basement 2. At Basement 3, the elevator gave a soft _ding_ and the doors slid open onto a hall that looked like a different planet compared to the administrative snorefest upstairs. The walls were gunmetal grey concrete, studded with steel bars and doors, giving the entire floor the feeling of a bunker of the post-Desert Storm era. Complete with the vague, lingering scent of gunpowder and envelope glue.

An armed guard turned from his post to stand in front of the elevator doors, a hand on the large semi-automatic belted to his hip. No small arms for this crew, that’s for sure.

The guard was an enormous man, broad-shouldered and half a head taller than A. He frowned, his prominent non-regulation sideburns making him look something like a heavy-jowled dog, maybe a mastiff. She knew him, though they rarely worked together. He wore a crisp blue uniform. The patch that should’ve displayed his name had been removed, so that only a velcro strip showed.

“Kazinsky?” the guard asked, and A noticed the strap on his holster was unfastened.

“Upstairs,” A said calmly, smiling a soft, disarming smile. She raised her hands, slowly, so he wouldn’t think she was going for a gun, and tugged her badge from the inner pocket of her suit. She showed it to him with a weary grin. “Hey D.”

He took the badge, examining it and then flipping it over.

“A,” he said, in acknowledgement, and gave her the badge back. To say D was a man of few words was an understatement.

“They’re with me,” she said, when his deep eyes, the color of well-aged wine, flicked to the attorneys standing behind her. He frowned, but shrugged, and clipped the sidearm’s strap back into place.

He gestured, a “come on out” motion, and stepped away from the door. To the other side of the door was D’s partner, a wall of a man even broader and taller than D was himself. The man’s heavy brow was low over his dark eyes, scrutinizing A and the two attorneys as they stepped into the hallway. He thunked a fist that seemed about the size of a child’s bowling ball against the button panel for the elevator, and the doors slid shut with a silent finality.

“Forms?” D’s partner asked, his voice a rumble that always reminded A of gravel rolling around in a cement mixer.

D’s partner, due to the unluckiness of being another initial-A name added to the roster after she herself had been listed, had been dubbed “El” for purposes of codenames. In turn the Agency’s teams (mainly S) had converted it into the delightfully accurate nickname _El Gigante_. He didn’t seem offended by it, taking it with the same steady, all-suffering patience with which he approached everything about his job.

“Hey Gigante,” she murmured, turning to accept the release forms the attorneys were actively fishing out of their briefcases. She handed them to the man, whose uniform had a matching velcro strip to D’s. He nodded and took them to a nearby desk, running them through the various tests and double-checks before beckoning Apollo over to stand in front of a small camera, then Athena.

While El Gigante checked them in and printed badges for them, D sighed and eyed her up and down with all the subtlety of a man who had not been approved for field work due to his low covert-ops scores.

“So,” he said.

“He’s innocent,” she said, her voice very quiet, almost a whisper.

“Hm,” D said, and the tone of healthy skepticism spoke volumes.

“He is,” she said again. “Just. Gotta figure out how to prove it.”

“I hope so,” he said, and she looked at him. His eyes were not on her, but somewhere in the middle distance, a little unfocused, but flinty with a simmering emotion A didn’t dare guess at. “I want whoever killed M on a spike.”

A watched him for a moment. “Do _you_ think it’s him? I mean really, _really_ think it’s him.”

He was quiet for a long time, perhaps thinking, perhaps merely waiting for her to go away.

Apollo and Athena returned to her, their badges hanging from lanyards that had the new, crisp look and the old, plasticy smell of a mass-produced piece ordered in bulk. El Gigante pointed down the hall, and A frowned, squaring her shoulders and heading in that direction.

“A,” D called, and she turned to look over her shoulder, the attorneys stepping aside to give her a clear line of sight. D’s expression was distant, but not cold. Somehow, he seemed smaller. Bowed under a weight sitting heavy on his shoulders. “I don’t know.”

A finished the thought in the quiet of her own skull: _and that’s what scares me_.

She frowned, but nodded. She repeated the gesture toward El Gigante, who gave her a polite, precise salute.

She turned to go down the hall, her shoes clicking on the concrete, the two lawyers flanking her like trumpeters behind an avenging angel.


	3. Underground

It took the detention team about 10 minutes to accept the request and go to obtain the prisoner—not T, of course, he was not “T” here, but simply “the prisoner.” In the interim, the two attorneys and A were seated in one half of a room that was bisected by a heavy reinforced steel wall, broken only by a large dense panel of safety glass through which they could see the metal table T would be sitting behind. A similar table sat on their side, and each one had a black device on top—the type you’d find in conference rooms at a moderately sized corporate office.

The wait was about seven minutes too long, in A’s professional opinion, but the lawyers seemed the very picture of patience and grace. She decided she could never go into the legal system, or risk her skull exploding from impatience and/or boredom. And they said the _military_ was a “hurry up and wait” brand of workplace.

T was finally drawn into the other side of the divided room, and A was caught in the morass between relief to see him in one piece and horror to see him this way. His brown hair was lying limply around his head, unkempt and unwashed, and he was dressed in the standard drab prison grey, his hands cuffed in front of his waist and connected, by another chain, to a steel belt. He was flanked by two men in black suits and riot-gear helmets, the faceplates tinted to mask their faces from observation or, A mused, recognition. One pushed him into a folding chair, then unbolted the chain that linked T’s handcuffs to his belt, moved his hands to the surface of the table, and bolted the chain to a link there, instead. The other, once T was chained to the surface of the table, shoved the chair forward with his boot. The two men stepped back, lingering inside what should have been T’s arm’s length, had he not been shackled.

Athena looked like she was going to say something. A lifted a hand, the universal _hold on_ gesture, and leaned forward to speak directly into the intercom. She kept her eyes on the guards, rather than on T himself, though when she spoke, she was speaking to none of the people in the room. In theory, the intercom was only to connect the two sides of the room, but she dealt with “theory” all the time.

“Can I get a voice-check on the clearance levels of the guards?” she said coolly.

There was a moment’s pause. The guards’ facial expressions were utterly invisible, but one shifted on his feet.

There was a click, like a button being pressed to engage a third intercom. Bingo.

“A, really?” said a voice, one that sounded vaguely familiar, but not enough to make her think she dealt with him on anything like a regular basis.

“Voice-check,” she repeated, implacable.

“Leave the room,” said the voice. The two guards shifted again. “Now.” They turned, fists balled at their sides, and headed for the door again.

“Satisfied?”

A kept her voice perfectly neutral, and smiled into the middle distance, where the guards had been. “Very much. Thank you.”

The intercom clicked off again, and she finally turned her attention to T.

He looked... calm, and somehow very sad. Upon closer inspection, she noted that he was not wearing the grey sweatshirt he should’ve been wearing. Instead, he was only wearing a short grey t-shirt, and there was visible bandaging poking out from under his right sleeve and the collar on his right side. She frowned at that, and her eyes flicked to his.

He watched her in turn, and she found herself wondering what he was thinking. Usually, she could read him like an open book, and even now through a panel of glass and two steel tables, she could glimpse grief, and frustrated idleness, and pain. Physical, that is, not emotional, though both were visible. The rest was hidden behind his neutral gaze, out of reach even for her.

“They haven’t been giving you your painkillers,” she noted. It was the first thing that actually came out of her mouth, and she supposed that someone somewhere was taking notes.

He smiled, but it was tighter than the one he usually reserved for her.

“No,” he agreed. “Didn’t really have time to grab the codeine when they dragged me out of my room.”

She rolled her eyes, but smiled at him, then raised an eyebrow. It wasn’t code per se, but she knew he’d get the gist. _Guess you can’t be in too much pain if you’re sassing me_. He grinned, and this time it was a little more natural, a little more honest. He hadn’t faked the pain, but he also had been broadcasting it deliberately. He wanted her to know. He wanted her to know that he was suffering, but was enduring.

_God, she loved that stupid man._

The thought was coherent, sudden, and painful, and she prayed to god her face hadn’t gone pink. She cleared her throat and shifted to the side a little, not trying as hard to hide a wince when her shoulder twinged at the motion. Two could play that telegraphing game, and the slight furrow of his brow told her he’d caught it.

“So,” she said, looking to the lawyers. “This is Agent T.”

Athena beamed at the man. “Good morning!”

Apollo shot her a wry look, then gave T a more professional smile. “It’s good to finally meet you, sir. We’re—”

“Yeah, I know who you guys are,” T said. “Just. Please don't show me your badge.”

Apollo deflated, just a little. “One time,” Apollo said, and sighed when Athena positively _cackled_ at him. “I did that _one_ time...”

“So,” Athena said, once she’d stopped laughing at her partner. “Can you tell us what happened?”

He shrugged with the uninjured shoulder. “What’s your case file say happened?”

A frowned at him, but he kept his gaze on his lawyers.

Apollo noticed the glance, but flipped through some papers from his briefcase. “The official report is that Erik Samson Hemming, Agency Director, visited your room for an unknown reason. The two of you presumably argued, at which point you drew a knife and attacked him. There was some wrestling for the blade, given that both of your fingerprints are on the handle, but ultimately military police arrived on the scene after the Director had expired.”

“Sounds airtight,” T said, and A gave him a much sharper look.

“T,” she said, stopping when his sad eyes slid back to her face. The grief she’d glimpsed before was on full display now, and it made her chest ache. He couldn’t possibly believe...

“It isn’t, though,” Athena said, and now she was watching their nonverbal conversation with an eagle’s eye, her Widget flickering various colors as it absorbed information.

“What?” T asked, glancing away from A.

“Airtight, I mean,” Athena said, and frowned at Apollo before looking at T again. “There’s huge holes. That’s what we want to know.”

“Alright, ask away.”

“Why did the Director visit your room?”

T glanced to A. She nodded. _Tell them everything_.

“He came to speak with me about one of our partners. A younger agent.” That made A inhale slowly, tamping down the reaction so the intercom wouldn’t catch it.

“Was that what he wanted to talk to us about at the meeting that afternoon?” she asked.

T shrugged, then flinched. He started to reach to touch his shoulder, the motion cut short by the chains keeping him to the table, and he grimaced.

“I don’t know,” he said. “He didn’t say. Just came to talk about V’s evaluations.”

A frowned, filing that away, but let the lawyers pick up the thread.

“So you were going to meet with the Director later that day?” Apollo prompted.

“That’s right. It was supposed to be the three of us, in the main building. Me, A, and the Director. But he showed up at my room while I was getting ready to leave for the meeting.”

“When was the meeting scheduled?” Athena asked.

“1300 hours.”

Apollo frowned and flipped pages back and forth. “Our report from the medical examiner indicates the primary cause of death was major blood loss brought on by trauma to the right chest with a bladed weapon... secondary cause of death was hemothorax. Fatality somewhere between 1215 and 1245?”

“That’s correct.”

“You were preparing to leave an hour before the meeting, then, and that’s when he arrived,” Athena mused. She didn’t sound like she found that odd, but T gave a vaguely defensive shrug of his good shoulder.

“I was still healing from the Bern mission. Needed extra time.”

That caught Apollo’s attention and he glanced to A. “Were there medical records that could give an assessment of his physical condition at the time?”

She blinked, startled to be addressed, then nodded. “Sure, of course. The doctors on staff at the compound would’ve had all the records.”

“Make sure we get a copy of those.”

She nodded, and he immediately returned his attention to T through the glass. “So about an hour before a meeting that the three of you would hold, the Director approached you privately about something that may or may not have had anything to do with the planned meeting. Something in that conversation caused one of you to become violent. Can you elaborate on that?”

T hesitated, long enough that the two lawyers looked up from their notes.

“Sir?” Athena prompted. “What brought on violence during your conversation with Director Hemming?”

“He. Well, he implied some things about the other agent that I didn’t like,” T said, with an inelegance that A would have found insulting if she wasn’t so busy trying to figure out what the hell was going on.

“Who pulled the knife?” Athena asked.

“I did,” T said.

Apollo hissed and twisted his right hand as if something had clamped around it.

Athena, without missing a beat or even looking at her partner, smiled at T. “Who pulled the knife.”

“I did,” he said again, frowning. Apollo exhaled slowly.

“Sir,” Athena said flatly. “Do not insult us by implying that because you’re a spy, we can’t tell when you’re not telling the truth.”

T blinked several times very quickly, sitting back a little bit in his chair. He looked at A for support, or at least corroboration that this was a very weird day they were having. She shook her head: _well, them’s the breaks_.

“I’ll ask you only once more,” Athena said quietly, but not angrily. She sounded pleading, instead, her voice gentle. “Who pulled the knife.”

For a long time, T was quiet, and A wasn’t sure if he was actually going to answer. “He did,” T said finally, his voice quiet, and a touch hoarse. “I... I told him I thought the agent was clean. He said I was picking the wrong side, and then he pulled his knife.”

A inhaled sharply and this time didn’t try to hide it. “He stabbed you. In the shoulder.”

T winced and looked away, but said nothing.

“Did you stab him?” Athena asked.

T was quiet a while longer, and A imagined he was picking his words more carefully.

“I’m the reason he’s dead,” T said.

Athena looked at Apollo, who gave her a helpless frown in return.

“That’s not what I asked, though,” she said, frowning and searching for an avenue. She looked at T again. “Did you stab the Director with the knife he used to stab you?”

“No,” he said. “But I am the reason he’s dead.”

A stood up from her chair like a spooked animal, the legs scraping loudly across the tile floor. “Don’t you dare,” she said.

He wouldn’t meet her gaze.

“Don’t you _dare_ do what I think you’re doing. This isn’t your fault.”

“I’m the reason he—”

“ _Bullshit!_ _”_ she snapped, and slammed her fists against the glass. It rattled, and he jerked his gaze up to her. In the corner of her eye she noted that Athena had jumped at the sudden sound, flinching away from her, and Apollo put a hand on her arm to steady her. The door behind them slammed open and guards came in to escort her out. By force, evidently.

A mouthed his name through the glass even as the guards came to grab her.

_Thomas_ , _please_.

They took hold of her shoulders and she shook them off, wincing. She stalked out the door unassisted.

The lawyers stayed, and spoke with their client without her.

 

The wait for them to reemerge felt interminable. They spoke with T for another fifteen, maybe twenty minutes, and when they finally stepped out into the hall they wore matching expressions of concern.

She said nothing to them, simply nodded and headed for the elevators, expecting them to follow. They didn’t speak either, and when they stood waiting for an elevator back to the ground level, she could see them sharing meaningful glances in the warped reflections they cast on the metal doors.

They filed into the corners of the elevator and she took the middle position, right in front of the doors, where they couldn’t see her face.

The motor of the elevator was whisper-soft, but seemed somehow incredibly intrusive in the silence yawning between them.

“I’m sorry,” A said as the elevator rumbled past the uppermost basement.

Apollo released a breath, but did not speak.

Athena was quiet for a moment, then clicked her tongue against her teeth. A turned her head slightly, so she could make out the shape of the young woman from over her shoulder. Athena gave her a smile, pained but also somehow teasing, and A furrowed her brow. Somehow she didn’t think she liked where this was going.

“Isn’t it a breach of ethics,” Athena said, though she kept her voice very, very soft, “To have two spies working together when they’re romantically involved?”

“ _Athena!_ _”_ Apollo hissed, horrified, at the same time that A did the one thing no one in the elevator—herself included—expected her to do.

She laughed.

When they had left the rank and file clerks and reemerged into a gloomily drizzling sky, A took a deep breath, then sighed it back out.

“Alright,” she said, and rubbed a knuckle into her injured shoulder, trying in vain to grind out the pain. “What’s next?”

“His room,” Apollo said immediately, shielding his head with his briefcase as Athena produced an umbrella. “We’ll need to take a look around the scene.”

She raised her eyebrows, considering, then nodded. “Shouldn’t be a problem, given the circumstances. Let’s go.” She led them back to the roadside, pulling her earpiece out of a pocket and re-engaging it.

“K.”

“Where the _hell_ have you been?” K snapped, her voice sharp with tension.

“Took the babies to chat with their client.” Athena gave her an irritated look, and A grinned, winking back at her. “Karma for your comment in the elevator,” she said, laughing softly when Athena threw her hand up in resignation.

“A...?” K asked, and A made a faint _hm_ noise in acknowledgement. “You sound like you’re in a good mood.”

“I am a consummate professional, K, you know me.”

It was meant to convey a host of things. Most of them landed, if not all, because K inhaled audibly, her voice quiet and sympathetic when she said, “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be,” A said, and sighed. “Can you get that driver back to us? They want to see the scene. Can you make that happen?”

“I’ll make sure the requests are through by the time you get here,” K said, and there was a flurry of keyboard keys clacking behind her voice even as she said it. “It’ll take some doing, but so much of this is... hm. Unconventional, let’s say. I don’t think the MPs will raise too much of a fuss. I’ll make sure you’re briefed on the whys and such.”

“You’re the best, K. I’ll radio when I’ve got news.”

There was a pause, and then the keyboard sounds quieted, picking up further away. She’d handed off a task to L, A thought.

“A?”

“Yes?” A said, frowning. The two lawyers glanced over, picking up on the tone shift.

“Don’t blame yourself,” K said, and A felt like all the breath in her chest had vanished, leaving a vacuum behind. “I know you,” she continued, and A hadn’t entirely realized how true that was until that exact moment. “It’s not your fault.”

A said nothing for a moment, then closed her eyes, shutting out the cement sidewalk, the asphalt, the leaves rustling past in the gutter. The sounds of the street slipped away, for just a moment, as she let herself stop listening to it.

“I should have been there,” she heard herself whispering. It was an indulgence. But for just a moment, she allowed it.

There was a fractional pause, then K said softly, “Hang on.”

She heard the unmistakable sound of the microphone shifting.

R’s voice came next, quiet but intense.

“A.”

She frowned, brow furrowing. “R? What...”

“Sorry for eavesdropping. Just... yeah, you should’ve been there. But I know you know what that means.”

For a moment, all the sound around her seemed to disappear entirely. Not in truth, of course. It was a sensory illusion, something her brain created to help her process R’s comment in bullet time.

_Someone made sure she couldn’t interfere._ Could that really be what he meant?

“The cleaning team was in, chatting, when I went to get coffee,” he said, his voice low and urgent, trying to make sure she understood. “They were done in half the time. Boasting. Someone’s keeping secrets, A. Someone who could fuck with the autopsy report.”

She inhaled and opened her eyes again as the car pulled up in front of her on the curb.

“Thank you, R. But don’t breathe a word—”

“I know,” he said. “And we won’t talk again till this is over. Go get ‘im, A.”

She disengaged the earpiece and tucked it into her pocket, then opened the car door for the lawyers.

“Secrets upon secrets,” she whispered, the words almost sub-audible. Athena looked her way, one leg into the car. “This isn’t done getting complicated,” she continued, her lips barely moving, her eyes locked on Athena’s.

The young woman frowned, then nodded, just the slightest move of her head to indicate she’d understood before she finished climbing into the car.

A followed, fighting the inclination to eye the driver or overtly check the car for bugs.

She was full of questions, but one ranked top priority:

_How deep did this shit go?_


	4. Manchester

K was as good as her word. They got more than a few ugly looks, but at the front office, the MPs and the crime scene techs begrudgingly issued permissions to let the lawyers in, grumbling things under their breath about “special dispensation” and “good thing we were already finished.” A figured that if she’d heard, Athena had _definitely_ heard, though the young woman was doing an absolutely remarkable job keeping her reaction off her face. She wondered, idly, how much Athena had to ignore and block out on a daily basis.

Even more idly she wondered how hard it might be to convince Athena to work with them. That would be a damn handy skill in a field agent.

_Focus, woman. Focus._

The halls of the Castle were unchanged, but there were subtle things, tiny differences that made A nostalgic for how it had been even a month prior. There was a simmering, quiet tension in the staff. An absence of certain sounds, like idle chatter, or laughter, or machinery, now unnecessary since they were operating with severely reduced personnel.

A led them upstairs to the third floor, then down a few corridors to T’s apartment. It felt like every step ratcheted the tension in her body higher, until she was wound so tightly something would have to break. R’s theories were rattling around in her skull like icy ball bearings, loud and cold and distracting as hell.

She hesitated outside T’s room. The door had been outright removed, and there was a chair, currently unoccupied, sitting next to the open doorway. A scanner had recently been installed beside the door. A examined the setup, glanced up and down the hall, and hummed thoughtfully.

“Looks like they swapped out guard duty for a badge-scan,” she said, and fished into her pocket for her badge. “Guess they really were finished.”

“Well, that’s a relief,” Apollo muttered darkly behind her. “The last thing we need is charges for tampering with a crime scene.”

She chuckled and swiped her badge. There was a faint sound like a motor powering down, and she nodded, satisfied, waving the lawyers inside. “You’ve got permission to be here, don’t worry. Might be wise not to deliberately track your footprints everywhere, but you won’t get into any trouble.”

“That’s a unique feeling,” Apollo mused, and grinned when Athena smacked his shoulder with one hand.

The two stepped into the center of the room, right in the eye of the storm. Athena pulled a small cloth bag from her briefcase, and she and Apollo went about pulling on thin latex gloves and divvying out little bottles between the two of them.

A, meanwhile, took in the clusterfuck that had until recently been T’s home. He had always kept his apartment in a state of mild disarray, despite her complaints. _You can fake neatness if you mess with neatness_ , he’d insisted over and over, every time they had that argument. _I know what my mess looks like, and I know when it’s not mine._

_This_ was certainly not his mess.

The small table in front of his couch was resting askew with one corner almost on the ground, the leg beneath it broken where someone had kicked it. Splinters of wood were littered over the carpet. The couch itself was too heavy to have been knocked over, but there were a couple errant slashes in the cushions, as if some of the fighters’ strikes had gone astray and caught the fabric.

She wandered. The bathroom was unaffected by the chaos outside, and in fact was positively tidy, the various bottles and jars of hair product and the like standing in ordered rows beside the sink.

“Hold up,” she muttered.

“Hm?” Athena called, from the main room, and within a few seconds she was standing in the doorway of the bathroom. “Huh. Looks like no one was in here.”

“No,” A said, slowly, thinking. She turned in a circle and scanned the room. “It’s never this clean.”

Athena frowned and crossed her arms over her chest, thinking. “How’s he wear his hair?”

“Like Apollo,” A said without hesitating. Athena laughed. “Or, sort of. Vertical-like, though.”

Athena nodded, mulling that over. “It takes Apollo an average of 45 minutes to get his hair like that,” she said, ignoring Apollo’s vaguely offended “ _It does **not!**_ _”_ from the other room, “So for that time table T told us, he would’ve been finished with his hair before he was getting ready for the meeting.”

“No way he would’ve left it this neat,” A agreed. “Trust me.”

“I do,” Athena mused, and made a note in her small pad of paper. “Someone was in here afterward then, but the cleaning crew shouldn’t have put everything back like that.”

“No. Someone was looking for something.”

Athena nodded, then headed back into the other room, still writing down notes. “Good catch,” she called back.

A followed her out a moment later, hands in her pockets. True to R’s tipoff, there was no blood in the room, the space scoured clean by the crew he’d mentioned. Athena and Apollo were misting a liquid around the floor near the window, studiously shining a UV light over each patch as they worked in a grid pattern across the wood panels.

“Team was in to clean up the blood,” A told them. “There’ll be photos, of course. I’ll make sure you get them.”

“We have them,” Apollo said absently as he worked with the Luminol. “Athena told me about what you found in the bathroom though, and what you said by the car. I figure someone—”

A shot across the room in a dead sprint, grabbed Apollo’s vest by the back collar, and hauled him backward so that she could clap a hand over his mouth. It was instinct, and it took her a moment to even realize she’d done it. Athena’s reflexes were good, but by the time she’d reached for A’s arm, A already had Apollo in her grip.

“Shh,” she breathed, as an afterthought, and his eyes, wide and very, very afraid, stared up at her. “Sorry,” she added, and slowly released him, patting his shoulder. “Just. Shh.”

“Right,” he wheezed, and she winced. “No, you’re right.” He tugged at the collar of his shirt with one finger, ending its abrupt stranglehold on his throat. “Later, then.”

She offered Athena an apologetic grimace and stepped away to remove herself from their sphere. She went to T’s dresser, instead, as they worked. One of the drawers was newer than the others. Cleaner, so that the varnish didn’t look like it was quite the right color. That made her frown, and she used the front panel of her suit jacket to pull it open. The contents inside were unremarkable, but also just slightly wrong. The shirts were folded the way he would, but they were a size too big. Which is to say, they were the size a man of his stature _should_ wear. But T had a habit—it would be inaccurate to say she disapproved of it, if she was being honest with herself—of wearing shirts that fit him like they’d been vacuum-sealed to his body.

When she opened the top drawer, she found that his handgun was missing. That seemed odd, since the report had indicated the Master died from a stab wound. If the gun had been removed, and especially if it had been fired, surely someone would’ve said something about it by now.

What was not missing, though, was a smallish jewelry box. She removed it and opened the box, revealing a talisman of red stained-glass inside. It was vaguely reminiscent of a pentacle, and had been a Christmas gift she’d given him a year before. Sentiment wrestled with practicality, and before she could think better of it, she was slipping the elegant silver chain over her head and tucking the small pendant under the collar of her shirt.

Athena let out a low cry of excitement, or perhaps accusation, in something A thought might have been a Franco-German pidgin. A turned, hastily pocketing the box and shutting the drawer with her elbow. The lawyers were not looking at her, as she’d expected, and she frowned.

“What is it?” she asked.

Apollo pulled out a camera and snapped a couple shots. “Blood splatter. Something the cleaning team missed. They got sloppy.”

She frowned and moved to stand over them, peering past their hands at the luminescent splatter lit by Athena’s UV light. There was a sharp corner cut into the splatter, stenciled by the edge of a sheet of paper.

“Folder, I’m thinking,” he said, quiet, when he realized she was looking. “It would have to be pretty substantial, to leave that sharp an imprint in something with the viscosity of blood.”

“And was removed carefully, likely while it was not quite dry, to leave that sharp an edge,” A said, agreeing.

“Exactly,” he said.

“There’s something else,” she said, and Apollo glanced up at her, pocketing his camera. “I think the third dresser drawer, right side, has been replaced. Like maybe the original was damaged.”

He frowned, and Athena made a few more notes on her slip of paper. “Athena, can you dust it?”

The young woman nodded and stepped away as Apollo stood up and carefully peeled off his gloves. “You know what bothers me about this?” he asked.

“I can think of several things.”

He gestured generally at the room. “The damage. It’s extensive.”

She nodded. “Don’t get me wrong, T can be destructive in a fight, but I’ve seen him spar with the Director. They don’t...” She waved a hand, mirroring his gesture. “ _Brawl_.”

“And it’s unlikely that they even could, if T was still taking _codeine_ ,” he added, and nodded when an expression of recognition came over her face. “I don’t buy it. Someone’s fabricated, or at least exaggerated, the scene, after the fact. Did you notice the slashes in the couch?”

“Yes.”

“No blood. Possible, of course, but unlikely, given that T’s shoulder was injured in the fight and there was ultimately a fatal stab wound. For strikes to go that wide, it would imply they were tired. End of the fight, not the start. I’m thinking that’s more fabrication.”

“Or someone thought he was hiding something in the cushions and wanted to make the search seem like it had been part of the fight.”

Apollo blinked, then eyed the couch warily. “Good point.”

“ _Cazzo_ ,” Athena said, sniffing disdainfully. “No prints on the drawer,” she reported, pocketing the bottle and removing her gloves. “Not a damn one. I mean, there’s marks all over the other drawers, which would jive with a single male resident, but that one? That one is completely spotless.”

“Then where the hell is the original?” Apollo wondered aloud.

A didn’t have an answer for that.

 

After fetching a few things from her quarters in the Castle, she took the lawyers back to their hotel. The two wanted to get dinner and try to piece together a narrative from what they had, and she needed painkillers and a night in her own damn bed. She took a cab to her flat in the city, desperately needing a change of scenery, and tried not to visibly favor her shoulder as she headed for the elevator.

But even before she’d flicked on the light in the entryway, A knew her flat wasn’t empty. She pulled the .38 from the rig under her left arm, one of the things she’d taken from her Castle apartment. Just holding it made her arm tremble all the way up to her shoulder and she firmed her grip on the gun with her left hand. She steadied her breath, wrangling her heartrate down to somewhere in the vicinity of normal. Today had already been so odd that she wasn’t exactly putting chips down on this being a generic home invasion.

She edged down the hall, glancing toward her bedroom. It appeared normal, the door half-open as she’d left it. She slowly pivoted around the corner into the main part of the flat. The living room was empty, but there was a triangle of gold light where someone had flicked on the lamp in her dining room. She turned the corner, gun raised.

“Easy there,” said a horrifyingly familiar voice. “No need to brandish that little pistol.”

She processed the scene in the space of a sharp inhale.

V, in civilian gear but still boasting the drawn, exhausted look of the recently hospitalized, was sitting at her dining room table, his hands flat on the wood surface. His face was pale and tight, a hiss escaping from his lips as his fingers twitched on the tabletop. He was out of his field gear, instead wearing just a tight black turtleneck under his favorite white jacket. There was a .22 she recognized as his personal sidearm sitting halfway across the table, out of V’s reach.

Standing beside him, curled over the back of the chair like a possessive lover, was Vladimir Serdsov. He looked about the same as he had in Bern. He was a slight, shorter man, all wire and corded muscle. He wore a trim black suit over a black shirt and a loud, blood-red tie. The tie set off the reddish-gold glint of his eyes, murderous but terrifyingly calm. His hair was gelled to sharp points where it stuck out over his forehead, and other than his pale face and that garish silk tie, the only other color on him was a delicate flash of silver. Specifically, an elegant silver butterfly knife.

Vladimir was pressing the knife to V’s neck, just above the cloth of his turtleneck, where it pressed into his skin without breaking it.

The window behind V was open, and there was a scattering of broken ceramic on her floor from a broken fruit bowl. Some books on a nearby table had been knocked out of their places, and one of them was even lying open on the ground. One of the dining room chairs was on its side, and it looked suspiciously like one of the lightbulbs in the chandelier hanging over the table had been shattered, a cluster of broken glass on the tablecloth. The lingering scent of gunpowder told her V must have taken a shot before he’d lost hold of the .22.

“I’d hate to make him _bleed_ on this nice coat of his,” Vladimir added.

“Shatterheart,” she offered in greeting, but did not lower the pistol.

His grin was wide, white, and horribly cold.

“Artemis,” he offered in return, feigning a warmth and familiarity that didn’t match his expression or meet her eyes. “Or should I call you Amalia?”

Later, she would take some satisfaction knowing that her face had betrayed none of her shock. She merely stared at him, matching him gaze for gaze, until he clicked his tongue against his teeth, bored.

_Now_ though, her heart raced and she flexed her fingers on the grip of her pistol to hide the way her hand was shaking.

_Just how deep into their systems had he and his master gotten?_

V started to say something, and the knife pressed harder, drawing beads of blood and making V hiss and shut his mouth.

“I’ve come to offer you a warning,” Shatterheart said, running his tongue over his teeth like he was savoring it. “You’d better leave this court case to the professionals, and keep your nose out of it.”

“And why’s that?” she asked, though a lifetime of bad clichés gave her the feeling she already knew where this was going.

“Because if you don’t,” he said, “Those precious defense attorneys of yours can say goodbye to their blossoming careers.”

“Because you’re going to kill them?” she asked, starting to lose patience.

“I won’t have to,” he said, and laughed. “If you interfere with the court proceedings and get their defense thrown out, you’re the one pulling the trigger. On your precious agent, and on their sterling reputations as ethical attorneys.”

Cold uneasiness trickled down her spine like drops of winter rainwater.

“Best hope you picked well,” he said, grinning like a devil. He slid the knife delicately away from V’s throat, leaving only a thin red line that didn’t so much bleed as absentmindedly leak, and retreated toward the open window. She moved, to get a clear shot at the window and fully intending to ping him once with the .38, but she hesitated. In the hand that had been hidden behind the chair, Shatterheart had a pistol trained on V even as he slid away. The weapon was rather heavier-looking than her own, probably a 9mm or a .45, and she didn’t doubt it was capable of penetrating the chair and most of V’s torso as a bonus. That said, it looked so large the recoil would probably sprain the asshole’s wrist in the process.

_Shit_ , she thought, recognizing the pearl handle. _So that’s where T’s gun ran off to._

He slid over the balcony of her apartment and disappeared into the night.

“Dammit,” she said, finally lowering her shaking arm to cross the room in a series of long steps that avoided fallen books and broken ceramic alike. She peered over her balcony, scanning for movement, the flick of a coat, anything. She saw nothing, and when she turned back inside, V was holding a hand to his throat, moving into her kitchen to fetch the first aid kit she kept next to the silverware drawer.

“Let me,” she said, putting the pistol down on her kitchen counter and pulling pieces out of the kit with professional urgency.

He grimaced, but leaned back against the counter, tilting his head back.

“Don’t talk till I’m done,” she said, earning a sharp look that said without words: _I’m not an idiot_.

The process of cleaning and bandaging the thin cut didn’t take horribly long, but her fingers were aching by the end, her grip shaky and a little fumbling.

“So,” he said finally, after she started putting everything away and trashing the bloodstained cloths she’d used. “Amalia, huh.”

She gave him a withering look, and he grinned, all boyish charm and bright, blue-eyed impish glee. She had just opened her mouth when he raised a hand.

“I know, I know. I won’t breathe a word.”

A little of the fear and tension leeched out of her. She nodded, satisfied, and then went to her table. She meant to slide down into one of the chairs, but the adrenaline had finally worn off, and she collapsed onto it instead. He righted the chair that had been knocked over and pulled it over next to her to sit.

“You okay?” he asked, his voice low.

She considered her answer for a moment. “No. Close the window?”

He nodded and got up, and a moment later sat back down beside her.

“How’s the investigation going?” he asked, keeping his voice to that soft, gentle tone.

“I don’t know,” she sighed. It wasn’t an answer, but it was an attempt, at least. “These lawyers L got were able to glean a lot out of the crime scene but it’s all pointing in different directions, so far as I can tell.”

V frowned faintly, his delicate eyebrows drawing together. “The attorneys were let into the crime scene?” he asked, incredulous.

She sighed and nodded. “With the caliber on this, it sounds like the courts just gave up bothering to get a detective team with adequate clearance.”

“Don’t we have MPs for that very reason?” V asked. “Or the marshals or something?”

“Prosecution invoked some bullshit statute no one’s followed in 50 years,” she said, waving a tired hand. “So it’s on them to find the evidence. Crime scene techs get first crack, then the legal teams, and if they find anything new, they submit the evidence to someone from L’s division.”

“Not L, I assume,” V said.

“Nah. Breach of trust. Bringing in someone else.”

“Know who?”

“I’ve got theories, but dunno for sure.” A sighed and rubbed a hand over her mouth. “They’ll go over it, check for any tampering, and submit it to the judge for use in the trial.”

“When’s that?” V asked.

“Day after tomorrow.”

“Shit.”

“Yeah,” she said softly. “They’re not wasting time.”

“More like they’re fast-tracking him for execution,” he said with a sneer. “They want someone to burn for it, and while I do too, I want it to be the _right_ person, dammit. Have you seen him?”

“Mm. And then got myself thrown out of the meeting room,” she said, and chuckled dismally. “Made their plate glass rattle, which, strangely enough, made them a bit tetchy. Probably thought I was about to crash through it and grab him out of the room.”

“They thought _you_ might bust him out?” he asked, incredulous. “They do know it’s you, right? Their most successful, hard-working, loyal agent?”

“Sure, but they probably think the same of T. They don’t know who they can trust any more than we can.”

He grimaced, but nodded. “I guess so.” He looked at her, his eyes sad and full of a single thought. A question.

_How is he?_

She let her gaze drop, and shook her head.

_Not good._

He frowned, then got up and went to a little closet near her fridge to get a broom and dustpan. He started sweeping up the broken ceramic, then the glass from the dining room table. Silence stretched between them like empty freeway in the middle of the night, dark and cold and dangerous with potential.

“How’d you get into my flat, anyway?” she asked.

“Your spare.”

“Right,” she said, and frowned. “Did you come straight here after you woke up?”

“I was in a coma for a month, then went straight into conditioning and evals. I’m tired of napping and being stuck in the Castle.” He gave a sheepish shrug and flashed her a grin. “And I missed you.”

She snorted, but smiled. “More like you got briefed on what happened and came running to compare notes and figure out what the hell is going on.”

“That too,” he said. “But I _did_ miss you.”

He made her a sandwich with food from her fridge, put water on for tea, and sat down next to her at her table when he was finished.

“I missed you too,” she said, her voice hoarse. Her throat felt tight, as if Shatterheart himself had his fingers tight around her neck. “Don’t do that again.”

He grinned, and winked. With the bandaging on his neck he looked roguish: the quintessential dashing young troublemaker. They ought put him on the recruiting posters. “I’ll do my best.”


	5. Liverpool

A woke to the sound of her phone ringing. That by itself wasn’t too odd, but when she plucked it from its charger and squinted at the screen, she didn’t recognize the number. She sat up, ran a hand through her hair, and answered.

“Hello?”

“Artemis?”

“Apollo.” She turned her bedside clock and squinted at it until the numbers started to make sense. “It’s not even 5 yet.”

He yawned audibly. “I know, I know. Listen. Athena got an email when she got up for her morning run.”

“The hell time does she get up to—”

“Ma’am, listen to me.”

A blinked, surprised by the tone of command in his voice. She listened.

“He was arraigned last night after we left. They’ve scheduled the trial for this morning.”

“But that’s absurd,” she said.

“So is everything about this kangaroo court. Are you actually surprised?” He didn’t wait for her reply. “I need some information from your side of things. Session convenes at 10, so I need it by then. Have you got a pen?”

She phoned L and got him working on Apollo’s questions—she was pretty sure the man subsisted solely on energy drinks and cigarettes—and headed into her living room. A sense of familiarity settled on her like a shroud. There was a moment, just a half a breath, in which it all seemed so normal and sane. For just that one moment, it could have been any morning. How odd, to feel the world all grind to a halt as she stood in her flat in pre-dawn dimness in a tank-top and shorts: an outfit that would get her thrown out of restaurants and heartily welcomed at clubs. She listened to the outside world. Everything was still and quiet, a moment of peace before the chaos of the whole world’s day-to-day. The city was still asleep, except for the night shifters and the coffeeshops prepping their morning’s work.

V lay on her couch in nothing but his trousers, one arm thrown across his face. The rest of his belongings were on a nearby chair, save the .22 he held against his chest, lightly rising and falling with his breath.

It _could_ have been any morning. Except that T wasn’t in her bed with the sheets tangled around his legs. He wasn’t here, silent and solid and dependable.

She felt the chill of his necklace against her skin and the quiet, calm familiarity was gone as fast as it came, replaced with a terrible resolve.

“V,” she said softly, and he tilted his head up to look at her. His hand didn’t even twitch on the .22. He’d already been awake.

“Tell me,” he said.

“They moved the trial up. We’ve got five hours.”

“Well then.” He sat up, his hair fluffy and haphazard with sleep. “I’ll get my suit.”

 

The tribunal didn’t convene at a courthouse, this being _special circumstances_ , but at a military facility outside town.

Though it only looked military from the outside. From the inside, it could’ve been almost any courtroom in the country, except for the heavily armed guards and bailiffs.

There wasn’t much of a crowd gathered outside or in the front lobby. But then again, given the circumstances, the whole affair was a clandestine event in its own right. It was like a fancy party for the ultra-rich: the only way to get in was to know about it in the first place. In fact, most of the gathered observers were other agents A knew. L and K were there, and S and R. Even D and El Gigante were lurking near a wall. They seemed to be watching the whole room, just like she was, and she nodded to them once when they caught her eye before moving on. V melted into the crowd with a final glance at her, and went to stand with S. A bit of a fuss was made over his presence—both that he was even awake, and that he was actually present.

She scanned faces on habit. Instinct. In theory, all these people should have been friends. But knowing that someone, someone in a position of power, was tampering with evidence, was _framing_ T to take the fall for the assassination... it was hard to know who to trust.

No, scratch that. It was hard to trust, period.

When Justice and Cykes arrived they were in much the same clothes they’d been in the day before, but cleaned and neatly pressed. Somehow they managed to make it look like dedication to a theme, rather than laziness, which was impressive all on its own. Apollo tucked his jacket over his arm and nodded to A, gesturing to the defendant’s lobby with a flick of his head.

A followed, her attention everywhere at once. That the room was full of former friends she couldn’t trust was bad enough. That the room was full of _spies_ was an order of magnitude above.

“Here’s the thing,” Apollo said as soon as the door was shut and the low din of the main hall fell away. “You won’t be able to come inside with us at the defense’s table.”

“You see, you aren’t technically part of the defense,” Athena explained.

Widget, somewhat unhelpfully but with implacable cheer, chirped “ _Désolé mon amie!”_

A frowned at the little device. Athena flinched, opened her mouth to say something, considered it for a moment, and then abandoned all pretense of displeasure over the interruption and shrugged.

“All right, then what do you expect me to do? Sit on my hands?” A asked, returning her attention to Apollo. It took effort not to _seethe_ , but _seething_ was categorically Not Helpful. It wasn’t the kids’ fault, after all, and it wasn’t fair to take out her frustration on them. No matter how much she wanted to.

Another door, separate from the one they’d come through, snapped open. A moved on instinct, sliding between the two lawyers and putting herself in between them and the door, blocking the line of fire. She had one hand under her arm before she could even consciously decide to reach for a weapon, and she cursed under her breath when she remembered that while she did have a vest on under her clothes, she had left her pistol with her bike. The legal system tended to take a rather dim view of bringing guns into a courtroom.

They’re funny that way.

A short young man with greasy, chin-length hair and a lab coat—which had several indeterminate smudges on the cuffs of his sleeves that she tried not to think about very hard—stepped inside. He froze when he saw A standing with her fists up like a boxer barely ten feet from him, his dark eyes going very wide behind the curtain of his hair.

She heaved a sigh and dropped her hands, letting her head droop forward. Athena patted a hand gently to her shoulder.

“Thanks anyway?” Athena said.

She offered Athena an uncomfortable frown, then turned forward. “Hey One.”

The scientist-turned-technician known in his documentation as “I” was a part of L’s division, and due to the rampant confusion that would come from anyone starting a sentence with “I was looking into this,” he’d immediately been renamed One by everyone who actually had to work with him on anything remotely resembling a regular basis. L in particular had taken to referring to I as One and to his interns as One-A and One-B, just to annoy them. One himself seemed entirely unfazed by the semantics of the situation, and answered to pretty much any name that seemed like it might be used to get his attention, just on principle.

“A,” he said, clearly uncomfortable. “I uh... I didn’t realize you’d be here.”

“I’m apparently leaving,” she said, sweeping a hand through her hair. “What are you doing here?”

“Delivering new reports,” he said, with deliberate ambiguity, and offered a sheaf of papers to Athena. He looked at A, saying with just a glare that he was fully aware she was not licensed as a lawyer, and that she could bugger right off, thank you.

Athena flipped through the pages at a frankly unsettling speed—lawyers had such odd skillsets—and then frowned, handing them off to Apollo. “It’s the health reports we asked for, on Agent T. Detailing the injuries he sustained in Bern, the meds he was on. The most recent x-rays he did, et cetera.”

“Thank you,” Apollo said, glancing to the technician. “The prosecution has a copy of this as well?”

“Yes,” One said, with a shrug. “Gotta supply all the same forms to both of you.”

One turned around and headed for the door, but A took a step to follow him.

“Hey,” she said, and he stiffened, half-turning to look at her. “One.”

“Yes?”

“Who does the autopsies in your department?”

He gave her such a frown that she thought he might actually be _offended_ by the stupidity of the question. “E, obviously.”

“So E did the autopsy on the Director?”

One pressed his lips together, clearly trying to decide if it was okay to answer that question.

“No,” he said finally. “Conflict of interest. It was, hm, _outsourced_ , I guess I should say.”

A cool prickle of suspicion crawled up her spine.

“Thanks,” she said, and turned around, heading for the main door. “That helps.”

“Wait,” Athena began.

“Where are you going?” Apollo finished.

“To sit in the gallery, apparently,” she said, and offered them a thin smile. “Good luck.”

 

There was a reason, A decided then, that courtroom dramas tended to do lots of cutaways. Dramatic montages, for example, interspersed with hints and clues as to what the villain was doing in the meantime, all whilst good people got dragged through the slogging quagmire that was the national justice system.

And that reason was that sitting in a courtroom and waiting for a case to be tried was fucking _boring_.

V, evidently working a couple steps ahead of her on this at least, had saved her a seat. In a group of ex-soldiers like this one, aisle space was coveted, but V had managed to barter his way to the end of a row with most of their usual team and had left the aisle seat for her. S was sitting on his left side, with R next to him, and then K, who looked as though being without her devices and her resources was making her actually physically twitch and shake. She looked a little like a junkie. L, by contrast, seemed relatively calm, though there was a lingering tension in his shoulders and the way he kept fussing with his scarf and the unlit cigarette in his mouth that betrayed his nerves. V, on the other hand, was sitting peacefully enough. But he was quieter than usual. Intense. He had one hand tangled up in one of S’s and the other was resting very precisely on his knee, like he didn’t dare move it or else it would give him away.

Finally, after what felt like hours, a bailiff called out names. All those gathered in the gallery shuffled to their feet, and a board of officers entered, taking up seats behind the bench. As they stood, V tucked his hands into his pockets, except for his right index finger. She glanced down at it, noting the signal, and scanned the room.

Part of her mind focused on the legalistic pleasantries, but the rest of her started tuning it out, surveying the crowd without turning her head. The gallery was largely unremarkable, other than an almost familiar head in a front row. Except it was absurd, to think that Vladimir Serdsov had managed to get into this tribunal.

But then, what about this whole situation _wasn’t_ absurd?

What she did notice, however, was the prosecution. The gentleman sitting at the prosecution’s table was broad-shouldered and noticeably tall, even while seated. He didn’t sit so much as lounge in his chair, utterly at ease. When he was called to give the prosecution’s opening statement he unfolded himself from his chair and stepped up before the board of officers. His suit, a black three-piece number so finely tailored that it made her own clothes look shabby, fit him like a glove and set off his deeply tan skin. He had pulled his long, silvery hair into a tail that somehow looked distinguished, rather than ridiculous.

“Who is that?” she whispered to V.

“I don’t know,” he said, giving her a meaningful look. That they knew so little about the prosecutor was at best, odd, and at worst, immensely conspicuous. “S says he’s a contractor who hired on with the Agency’s legal service some thirteen months ago.”

She watched the man move. He had a low, droning voice, and spoke deliberately, with an absolutely exasperating slowness. It made him come off as deeply patronizing, like he knew that no one else had anywhere more important to be and was thus perfectly content to milk his captive audience for all it was worth.

“Strange this isn’t being tried by an Agency lawyer,” she said, watching the man. He gestured widely with his hands as he talked, each spread of his hands punctuation to his precise, pointed words. She was suddenly reminded of an amateur production of _Richard II_ she’d seen once.

“Conflict of—”

“Interest, I know,” she grumbled. “Doesn’t seem right it’s not in-house though. I want to know whose payroll he’s on.”

Finally the prosecution sat back at the counsel’s table, and Apollo stepped up to begin the defense’s opening statement. This A listened more closely to, though it was mostly all things she already knew. Given that the case was not being tried for a jury, just the board of officers, it was rather less _plea to the jury’s sense of honor_ and more _promise to uphold the law in their work to prove that their client is wholly innocent of the crimes of which he’s been accused_.

T was finally allowed into the room when he was brought onto the stand to give his testimony, and then A _really_ started paying attention.

He looked awful. He was still wearing the grey sweatpants and t-shirt, the bandage on his arm showing beneath the sleeve. There were circles under his eyes, and while he had been allowed to do more to his hair this time, it was swept back and tied at the back of his neck, rather than sticking up proudly from his forehead the way she was used to.

His hands were still chained to his belt, and he sat on the chair provided to him in an awkward, hobbled crouch. The bailiff swore him in, and the prosecution rose from his table.

“Your name and rank for the record.”

T shifted in his chair, trying to find a more comfortable way to sit. “Commander Thomas George Osmond, RNVR, sir.”

The prosecutor stepped forward as the bailiff retreated to his earlier position. “Now then. Let us begin. Your relationship with the Director was strained of late, is that true?”

T frowned. He glanced toward the board of officers. Finding no reprieve there, he looked back at the prosecutor. “I wouldn’t say so, no.”

“You don’t think that your relationship with the Director of your Agency—the deceased—was strained.”

“No sir.”

“You say this even though in your most recent performance review he described you as—” the prosecutor flipped open a small notepad and reviewed it “—and I quote, ‘Agent has tendency to jeopardize missions by making personal judgement calls. He walks the line between our side and opposing side too often. I advise that fieldwork only be assigned under extreme caution.’ He said this about you in your review, yet you would characterize your relationship as being... what?”

“Average,” T said. “Normal. We disagreed on things, sure, but it didn’t affect our personal relationship.”

“Even though this performance review might negatively impact your wages.”

T’s expression turned a little harder. “I’m not doing this job for the money, sir.”

“Then why do you do it?”

“What I do is vital work,” T said.

“Ah yes,” the prosecutor noted. “Destabilizing governments, removing threats. Vital work indeed.”

“Objection,” Athena cut in suddenly, over a rumble of disapproval in the gallery. “My client is on trial here, not the Agency he serves.”

The officer sitting most at the center of the bench frowned at her. “I would remind the defense that this is not a traditional courtroom,” he said, somewhat drily.

“Thank god,” Athena muttered, “The British courtroom dress code is _absurd_.”

The admiral either ignored that, or didn’t hear it, and turned his attention to the prosecutor again. “However, I would also remind the prosecution that he may want to consider his audience more closely before he seeks to malign the work the Agency does and the men who serve it.”

The prosecutor spread his hands and smiled. “Of course, sir.” He turned back to T. “Vital work, you called it. What drives you to do it?”

“It’s what I know,” he said.

“Indeed,” the prosecutor drawled. “You’re comfortable there, you might say.”

“I suppose I would.”

“Then if your career there was threatened, it would be safe to say that you would be at loose ends.”

“I suppose, but I’ve been given no reason to believe my job is in jeopardy.”

“What did you talk about?”

“Beg pardon?” T said.

“According to your statement to the MPs who arrested you, the Director came to your room at approximately 12 noon to chat with you.”

“He did. In advance of a meeting scheduled for 1300 hours, with my partner.”

“And your partner, where was he?”

“She,” T said, scowling over the mistake. A felt a thrum of pride curl up in her chest like a cat. “My partner was not present. She was in town and was going to come on-post for the meeting.”

“Your partner’s a woman?” the prosecutor said, and actually sounded bewildered. “Is that allowed?”

“Yes?” T said, frowning. “Why wouldn’t it be?”

“Conflict of interest,” the prosecutor suggested. “Fraternization policies?”

“Objection!” Athena protested again, slamming both hands on the counsel table. “This line of questioning is completely irrelevant.”

The admiral eyed the prosecutor. “Is this relevant, Solicitor?”

“I’m not sure yet,” the prosecutor mused. “That’s why I’m asking.”

“Overruled,” the admiral said, glancing to Athena as he said it. “But get to your point quickly, Mr. Ashoka.”

The prosecutor bowed. Actually _bowed_. A felt rage slowly taking over the feeling in her chest, simmering like a pot of soup ready to boil. He was so slimy she wanted to pour salt on him just to see what happened.

“Mr. Osmond. Are agents allowed to fraternize with other agents?”

“Depends what you mean by fraternize,” T said icily. “We are encouraged to form friendships and bonds with other agents. You have to be able to trust _somebody_. Especially in this line of work.”

“I see,” the prosecutor murmured. “The conversation you had with the Director. It turned violent, is that correct.”

“It did,” T said.

“Why was that?”

“I.” T frowned and glanced toward Athena and Apollo. He looked out toward the gallery, and A could almost feel his gaze scanning the crowd for her. She nodded, hoping he could see it. “I defended myself,” he said finally. “The Director was... not acting like himself. He claimed he couldn’t trust me, drew a knife, and tried to hurt me.”

“The knife was his, then?”

“Yes sir.”

“Why did he think he couldn’t trust you?”

T hesitated again and A cursed. _Answer, dammit_.

“He said he thought I wasn’t on his side, because I wouldn’t support his opinion of another agent.”

A hissed out a breath, and beside her V suddenly tensed.

“What do you mean by that?”

“He believed that another agent might not have been wholly loyal to the cause,” T said. “I disagreed. He– the Director, I mean, seemed to believe that if I trusted that agent, it meant that I was choosing his side over the Director’s.”

“So you claim you fought back.”

“I attempted to disarm him,” T said firmly. “I was injured at the time and not in an ideal condition for an extended struggle.”

“But you were angry. You trusted him, after all. Why wouldn’t you be? You trusted the Director, and you trusted this other agent. But the Director was violating that trust. So you were angry. You scuffled. Is that right?”

“Yes sir.”

“Did you disarm him successfully?”

“Yes,” T said. “Briefly, at least.”

“So you were also holding the knife.”

“At times.”

“You had the knife,” he said, spreading his hands, “It was a heat of the moment kill. Kill or be killed, even. He had maligned your reputation, the reputation of a friend.”

“What?” T said, startled. “No—”

“Who could blame you?” Mr. Ashoka continued, turning to face the board. “It would be called self-defense by even the most fair judge in the world,” he said. “You’d keep your post, you’d keep your career, you’d keep your partner, with whom you’ve developed such a deep and abiding _friendship_ , and you’d keep your friend, the flipped agent that your Director had found reason to mistrust.”

“That isn’t,” T protested, standing abruptly, the chains jangling as he jumped to his feet, his hands smacking the banister. “No, that’s not how it happened!”

“By your own admission,” Mr. Ashoka insisted, talking over him, “And supported by fingerprint data at the crime scene, you had the knife in hand. By your own words, you were trying to end the fight quickly. You had more than enough reason to be cross with him, nay, even to hate him.” He faced T again. “Not fiercely, no, but enough that there was a spark. When fanned by circumstance and imminent risk of bodily harm, you were compelled...” He spun in a slow, languid circle to survey the courtroom, both hands clenched into triumphant fists as he took in his audience. “To _strike him down_.”

“No!” T insisted.

“The prosecution rests,” Mr. Ashoka said, and turned away from the stand. “Your witness, sir. Ma’am.”

Athena looked pale. Determined, but pale. Apollo looked ashen.

A stood abruptly, her boots clacking on the hardwood floor of the central aisle. V looked up at her, hissing a protest, but she didn’t hear him over the roaring in her ears of fury and blood.

Standing so fast made her head spin. The tension in her spine and her arms made her shoulder ache like crazy and she wished she’d had the good sense to put some of her painkillers in her pocket. The Kevlar was uncomfortable enough without adding the injury on top of it.

But it was enough noise that T’s eyes snapped to her. They were wide, stricken with agony, but she saw something harden in them when he saw her.

A nodded, just slightly, and clicked her heel. He didn’t acknowledge it, but she knew he’d know.

_On your six._

She spun on her heel and headed toward the door. She heard some of her friends scrambling to follow her.

She couldn’t do anything for him in here. She’d have to trust the lawyers.

But that didn’t mean there was _nothing_ she could do.


	6. Leigh

K, R, and V followed her out of the tribunal chamber. S stayed for moral support, while L stayed in order to keep a steady stream of information going to K. Not that he would wear a wire inside a courtroom, of course.

That would be _wrong_.

K talked her out of going all the way back to her flat in Manchester. The drive was long, and for all their efforts, it was too easy, she insisted, for someone to have bugged it. Even the Agency might well have done so solely to counter anyone _else’s_ bugs.

Once they figured out who was moving in the shadows, it’d be easier to counter their efforts. But until then, they went for obscurity through lucidity. They stopped at a small motel in Leigh, about halfway between Manchester and Liverpool. It was a quaint, countryside-looking place, right in plain sight on one side of a roundabout across from a petrol station. They convened at the station first, refueling their respective vehicles and sharing notes.

A used the grimy station restroom to swap her blazer for K’s sweater, though she left the Kevlar and the button-down underneath. She couldn’t shake the idea that Shatterheart had been at the tribunal somehow and might have followed them out.

The inn she’d picked, The Greyhound, was a sporting lodge first and motel second, and it showed in the façade of the pub out front. Lots of exposed wood beams and whitewashed stone. A row of stools sat outside, damp from recent rain. A imagined for a moment that the stools were actually drooping, longing for weather more appropriate to sitting outside with a pint and a friend. V stayed outside with the others to unload gear from K’s sedan as A went indoors, flagging down the manager. He was a man on the wrong side of 40, and had that strained, exhausted look, as though the muscles of his face were overworked from being polite to his customers. The metal tag on his polo shirt said _Cormac_.

“Mister eh, Cormac is it, hi, yes, I’d like a small suite please,” she said, slathering on a case of nerves and a northern accent as easily as breathing. She lay a handful of pound notes on the counter that he eyed with only the mildest interest. “With a window facin’ the street if it’s no trouble?”

“I’ll see what I can do miss,” he said, and started tapping on his computer. He extended a hand. “Name and ID please.”

She tugged a small stack of notes out of the front pocket of her trousers and palmed them into his hand as she shook it.

“I’m sorry for the trouble,” she murmured, when he glanced up at her face again, startled. “Y’see it’s just that I’m trying to lose my ex-husband on the road before he can catch up and drag me back home. Is there any chance you could um, _not_ put down my name?”

He glanced at her, then at the stack of bills in his hand. “Mrs. Smith it is,” he said with a sly wink, pocketing the cash and tapping on his computer.

“Thanks,” she said, flashing him a smile.

“Just the room for one, then?”

“Four if you don’ mind,” she said. “Been traveling with some friends. For safety-like.”

“Bit surprised,” he admitted, though he didn’t stop tapping his keyboard as he said it. “You look like you could take care of yourself.”

She chanced a smile, twisting her mouth so it looked a little raw and pained. “Should’a seen me six months ago,” she said, with that quiet, uncomfortable air of a confession. “Left eye was so swelled up I couldn’ see out of it.”

His expression turned hard, his eyes flinty with disapproval. “What’s your fella look like, ma’am?”

“Bit on the short side, about yea tall,” she said, extending a hand to Vladimir’s height, about level with her nose. “Black hair he wears up in spikes, like the teenagers like to do now. And eh, likes to wear suits with a pin on the lapel like a falcon. Very slight Russian accent? If y’see him, sir, you won’t tell him where I am?”

“Not a chance, ma’am,” he said, and handed her a pair of keys. “He shows his face ‘round here I’ll run him off, don’t you worry.”

“Thank you,” she said, taking the keys and slipping back outside. Once she was out of view of the door she straightened up a little more, rolling her shoulders back and shedding the façade like an ill-fitting jacket.

“Everything all right?” V asked.

She nodded. “Let’s go.”

Their room was small, but it was out of the way and had several windows facing out onto the road, just like she’d asked. There were two beds, one of which K immediately commandeered for a sprawling workstation that resembled some kind of Frankenstein-like hybrid of a gaming rig and a stockbroker’s display. V checked his weapons out of habit, sitting down on a tiny sofa to clean his .22 and a larger, Agency-issue .32. Or maybe he just did it to have something to do with his hands and all his nervous energy. A silently handed him her own .38, and he set to cleaning and reloading it as well.

She and R, in the meantime, checked the walls and floorboards for possible bugs or other worrisome devices, pulling down paintings and unplugging everything in the room to check behind the electrical plates and lightswitch covers.

Finally satisfied that the room was as clean as they could manage, A slid into her shoulder holster and put her blazer back on. She collapsed into an armchair by the window to wait for K to finish hooking up her various systems. R leaned against the wall across from her, covering the other angle out the window.

“Do you really think we’re being set up?” A murmured.

“Yeah,” he said, without looking at her. He considered his words for a moment, then forged ahead, unfazed. “Skyler does too.”

Maybe the fact that he was dropping names so readily should have worried her. But then again they’d all just heard T give his own full name. Maybe now it felt like solidarity, instead of breach of confidentiality.

“Thought he didn’t like getting involved in the tradecraft,” she said.

“Oh he hates it,” R said, chuckling. He sobered too quickly, and let out a tired sigh. “But it’s the fact of it, isn’t it. Someone’s out to screw over Thomas, and we can all see it.”

“Yeah,” she said. “Just gotta make sure the admiralty board sees it too.”

“I’m up,” K said. “Where should I start?”

“The prosecutor,” A said. “I want to know who pays him.”

“He hired on a year ago,” V added. “Contractor for the Agency’s legal services division.”

“Didn’t know we contracted that out,” K said.

“Me neither,” they said, almost all at once.

K’s fingers flew over her keyboard, data scrawling across her display screens faster than A could imagine being able to read.

“Looks like he’s a Mister Eka Ashoka, attorney at law. Hm.” She tapped through a few more pages, frowning at each one as she went through them. “Looks like he’s a partner... let’s see. Partner in the U.K.-based law firm Chihiro & Ashoka. I’m seeing some news reports about big cases they won—ooh.”

“What’s ooh?” A asked, frowning.

“In 2016 they were on a list of the top 100 law firms globally by revenue. Sounds like they’re a pretty big deal.”

“Any suspicious payments?” R suggested.

“It’s a _law firm_ ,” she quipped, but she was reading again. “It’d be easier to find payments that _aren’t_ suspicious.”

“Who are their biggest clients?” V asked instead.

“Hard to say, they’ve got offices in some 15 countries. Their client list isn’t exactly publicly available.”

A frowned, thinking. “Hey, K. Can you find out if they have a professional relationship with a company called χ-Corp?”

The other three turned to look at her, puzzled.

“Yeah, I think so,” K said. “Just a sec.”

Her fingers tapped and clattered for another few seconds, and then she inhaled, sharp. “Bingo. Court records indicate Chihiro & Ashoka have done some civil suits for them, and a lot of work on retainer. To the tune of several million pounds last year. Looks like they’re on speaking terms with the CEO, a cartoonishly vague ‘Mister X.’ Lovely.” She looked up. “So what the hell’s χ-Corp?”

“Dunno,” A admitted. “But Shatterheart is connected to them somehow.”

“Well then I’d say they warrant some further interest,” K said, grinning. Her tongue poked out between her teeth and she leaned in a little closer to her screen. “Let’s see.”

“Kai, what are you doing?” R asked.

“Roland, do I ask _you_ stupid questions when you’re working on your gadgets?”

“No,” he said, with just the slightest hint of sulkiness in his tone.

“Then buzz off. I’m trying to get into a fortified χ-Corp server.”

That was alarming enough that A got up from her chair. “K, are you sure?”

“Absolutely,” she said, grinning. In the backlight from her screens she looked absolutely diabolical. As she worked, a few warning tones chimed from the computer. A red box lit up on her screen, then vanished, then came back with friends. “Shit.”

“What’s wrong?” A said, moving to look over her shoulder.

“They’re trying to counter and backtrace me, hang on...”

A’s phone chimed and she jumped. K kept tapping, and A pulled the device from her pocket, scanning the screen.

“Unknown number,” she said. “Get out of there, K.”

K nodded, frowning at her screen, and A connected the call.

“Hello?”

The voice on the other end was like gravel and silk—a smoker’s drawl with a touch of spite peppered in like shards of glass.

“Hello, Amalia.”

She stiffened. “Mr. X, I presume.”

K shot her a look of wide-eyed horror, mouthed _I’ll trace it_ , and got right back to work on her computer.

“You’ve done your homework,” he murmured. There was something familiar about his voice, like she’d heard it once before. “As I’d expect from Erik’s top agent.”

“Kind of you,” she said, mostly to stall for time. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

“You’re digging into some things you would be wise not to dig into,” he said. “I thought my associate made the... _case_ quite clear.”

“I’m not interfering with the proceedings,” she said, putting in some effort to sound unaffected but polite. “Your little boytoy was pretty specific. I shouldn’t get involved in _court_.” He said nothing. She watched K, typing frantically and tracking through screens in a mad dash. “But then, he’s not as subtle as you are, is he.”

Mr. X let out a low sigh. “Indeed. Good help, et cetera.”

“Shame,” she murmured. “That lawyer of yours, though, he seems like good help. Very ah. Deliberate.”

Mr. X laughed. It sounded a little manic. “An excellent word! Mr. Ashoka is quite the public speaker, wouldn’t you say.”

“He’s very, hm, long-winded,” A said, wincing. K was giving her a _one second, one second_ gesture with one hand while clattering keys with the other.

“Not a trait we share,” he mused. “Until we meet again, Agent.”

Even the _beep beep beep_ of the disconnected call sounded sullen and dejected.

“Please tell me you got something,” she said, leaning over K’s shoulder.

“Well,” K hedged, frowning at her screen. She heaved a sigh, but then she looked up, her face splitting open in a huge grin. “What kind of amateur do you take me for? Of course I got you something.”

“Thank god.”

“It isn’t much, but it’s a starting point,” she said, pulling up some surveillance camera footage. “Looks like a pier in Blackpool.”

“I’m going,” A said, picking up her pistol from where V had finished with it. She slid it into her shoulder rig and gave an audible groan of relief at the familiar weight of it under her arm.

“Me too,” V said, sliding his .22 into his boot and his .32 under one arm.

“V, you’re not even officially cleared for duty,” she said.

“Neither are you, with your injuries,” he fired back. “This isn’t active duty, A, this is _Thomas_. I’m not letting him go down without a fight, and if he gets out of this and finds out I let you go up against Shatterheart’s creepy boss without backup he’ll actually kill me, and then where will we be? Back in court, that’s where. And me in a box!”

Unfortunately, he had a point. She let out a breath, thinking, then nodded.

“Thank you,” he said.

“All right,” A said, looking around the room. “K, on comms?”

“Of course. I’ll let you know if L contacts, too.”

“Right.” She took one step toward the door, then spun back around. “K. While we’re gone, can you look into who did the autopsy on the Director?”

R gave a derisive snort. “I’d bet cash money it’s someone connected to χ-Corp.”

“No bet,” A said with a wry, pained laugh. “But if you could confirm, that’d be great.”

“I’m on it.”


	7. Liverpool

“Run this through with me one more time, Mr. Osmond,” Athena said, rubbing her forehead with one hand as she paced back and forth in front of the witness stand. “According to your medical records, during the Bern mission you were shot in the leg.”

“Yes ma’am. Right thigh, specifically.”

“At which point you did surgery on yourself, at night, in the back of a moving car.”

He cleared his throat, visibly uncomfortable. “Uh. Yes ma’am, that’s correct.”

“Well that’s rather remarkable, isn’t it.”

“I suppose so.”

“Given the limited ability of anyone to work in those conditions, it’s really incredible the wound didn’t become infected.”

“It was touch and go for a while ma’am, I’m told.”

“So it’s safe to say it’s taken a while to heal.”

Thomas blinked like the question startled him. “Yes, ma’am.”

“In fact even now, approximately seven, maybe eight weeks from the mission itself, you’re still limping. In your earlier statement you indicated that you’re still on painkillers, and the reason you were in your room at noon, preparing for the meeting at 1 o’clock, was that you needed to give yourself extra time.”

“Yes ma’am.”

“Were you using any assistive devices? Cane, crutches?”

“I had been ma’am, but in the last week or so I’ve been trying to wean myself off the cane unless I’m going a long distance.”

“And how would you define long, Mr. Osmond.”

“Oh I suppose... quarter, maybe half a kilometer? Less, if stairs are involved.”

“And the meeting,” she said. “Where was that in relation to your room.”

“Down two flights,” he said, looking queasy.

“I see.” She nodded, pacing a little more. “So you would have gone to the meeting with your cane.”

“Definitely.”

“But you weren’t using it in your room.”

“No ma’am.”

“Where was it?”

He frowned. “I’d figure it was hanging on the bureau, where I usually put it.”

“The bureau,” she mused, and used her holo-display to pull up several pictures of the crime scene and a simplified map of the layout of his bedroom. “Here, near where the Director was found, then.”

“Yes ma’am.”

“Why were you going toward the bureau? It doesn’t seem like that’s where you two would have been standing to have a conversation.”

“No ma’am. We started a bit closer to the sofa there,” he said, pointing with one shackled hand to her display. “But I was trying to lead toward the bureau.”

“Why is that, Mr. Osmond, were you trying to reach your cane? The fight must have been taking a lot out of you, by that point. Your medical records indicate you were still taking relatively substantial doses of codeine for the pain.”

“That’s true, I was taking codeine.”

She frowned at his phrasing and turned to face him. “The cane, then.”

“Um.” He hesitated and wrung his hands together. “No ma’am, I wasn’t going to the bureau for my cane.”

“Why then? The fight was, as you’ve explained in other statements, rather tense, and extremely tiring. You were trying to end it. So why lead the scuffle toward the bureau?”

He was quiet for a long moment, and a slow, aching dread picked up in Athena’s stomach. She opened her mouth to withdraw the question.

“I had a handgun in my drawer, ma’am.”

The explosion of noise in the gallery was sudden and furious, enough to make her flinch. _Dammit, Thomas,_ she thought. _This is why you’re supposed to tell us_ everything _during our conversations!_

“Order!” one of the admirals was shouting, slamming a fist on the bench. “That is _enough!_ I will have order!”

She glanced back over her shoulder. Mr. Ashoka was simply sitting in his chair, with his arms crossed over his chest, smiling.

“I was trying to reach it,” Thomas added, loud and insistent to be heard over the backlash, “Because I thought I could shock him, startle him into stopping the fight and talking to me. I wasn’t going to shoot him. It was _only_ to try to bargain with him!”

“You see!” Mr. Ashoka called from his seat. “Your client admits to attempting to use lethal force on the stand, Ms. Cykes! I had heard interesting things about you and your partner, but your reputations truly do not do your inelegant flailing about in the courtroom...” His grin was positively sharklike. “ _Justice_.”

“The prosecution will be quiet!” the admiral snarled. “Ms. Cykes.”

She looked toward her own counsel table. Apollo looked miserable, but he shook his head, an answer to the unspoken question.

“No, uh, no more questions at this time, Admiral,” she said. “The defense rests.”

The admiral let out a low sigh, then turned to the bailiff. “The prosecution may call its next witness. Commander, remove the defendant from the stand to his counsel’s table.”


	8. Blackpool

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's a section in here that, if all the world were fair and this was ever made as a Bond movie, should absolutely be set to "Rage Awakened"...

The ride from Leigh to Blackpool wasn’t overly long, but it certainly was pretty. Even A could admit that, and even in the supreme stress of her current circumstances. Rather than take K’s sedan, they rode the motorcycles they’d taken to the courthouse, and every now and then A glanced over her shoulder to see V weaving contentedly along in her wake like a dolphin following an orca.

“Don’t you get tired of that dinky thing?” she asked him through the helmet mic, grinning to herself as she heard him scoff.

“Says the woman riding a crotch rocket!”

Her gasp was dramatic and earned the exact intended response: his musical laughter filling her ear. “This is a proper bike, you heathen! Take that back!”

“Not a chance!” he crowed, swerving around her and tearing out ahead with a growling roar from his bike. She grinned, staying put and letting him burn fuel. There was one thing to be said for riding: it was awfully hard to feel caged and backed into a corner when she was gliding along at some 50 mph with her legs wrapped around a 4-cylinder engine purring like a jaguar. It actually put her at ease, feeling the wind tug at her jacket and watching the sun glint off V’s helmet.

Blackpool was. Well, it was Blackpool. It was turning into a sunny afternoon, so the crowds were out in force, and they had to slow down as they approached the waterfront. A wove between clusters of tourists, dodging bikinis and board shorts as V, several yards behind her, ducked around surfers and umbrellas and water coolers.

The pier K had told them about was off a ways from the main beach. They passed a little amusement park on their way in, the thick scents of spilled soda, fried food and candy floss following them as they rolled by. Metal rollercoaster tracks rose above their heads, arching up into the sky like writhing serpents and leaping dolphins.

“Little further,” K said. “See it?”

“I don’t like this,” A said, scanning the boardwalk as they rolled further and further south until the crowds petered to nothing. A single empty pier sprawled out over the waves like a lounging lover. Tape had been put up to keep crowds away, and there were some crates and construction equipment littering the old wooden boards. She rolled among them, then past them. She stopped about halfway down, climbing off her bike and pocketing the keys.

No one was nearby, but she spotted a dark figure standing further away, near the end of the pier.

She pulled her helmet off and set it on the seat, shaking out her hair.

“Me neither,” V said, rolling to a stop beside her and looking around. He nodded at the shape at the other end. “This whole place reeks of a setup.”

“Stay back here and watch my back,” she said. “And keep your engine running.”

“Sure,” he said, and revved it once for good measure.

A made her way down the pier, scanning around her as she went, her hands hanging loosely at her sides for a quickdraw if she needed one.

Slowly the man standing at the end of the pier came into view, then into focus. Once she got within a dozen meters of the end of the pier she realized that she did recognize him, though only vaguely. He’d been in Bern. T had mentioned him only once, during an unofficial debrief they held over drinks at her flat. An unnamed stranger who ordered Shatterheart around like a minion. The one who’d ordered them both shot dead while she lay semi-conscious and dying on the ground. Which meant he was responsible for the gunshot wound she’d taken to her shoulder. It ached when she looked at him, as if in sync with her thoughts. Or maybe it was just making a statement. Either way, she rolled it uncomfortably, trying to work out the tension.

He turned to look at her as she approached. He was an older man, maybe in his mid-60s, but he hadn’t aged well. He was bent forward in a permanent stoop, and his bald head threw back the afternoon sunlight. He didn’t wear a tie, and his shirt was unbuttoned. The irreverence of age: he was far too old and far too rich to be concerned with appearances now.

She called out to him as she got closer. “Mister X.”

“Amalia Douglas,” he said, with a positively genial smile.

For once she didn’t come off as stoic as she’d intended. She froze, her bootheel clicking a little too loudly.

“Oh don’t worry,” he said. Improbably, in person his voice was even more gravelly than it had been on the phone. “There’s no data breach to track, no informant to hunt.”

“Why should I believe that?”

“Because it’s far less work to simply believe this: Erik and I were friends, once.”

In another world, she might’ve laughed. Here, now, she just frowned, filing away that information.

“So why are you here?”

Mr. X looked around him, surveying the beach. His expression was hard to read, but seemed somehow... pensive. “Here, in Blackpool? Or do you mean more generally.”

“Surprise me.”

He laughed a rich, rolling laugh. It set her teeth on edge.

“Such spirit. Erik did favor you so, Amalia.” He inhaled once, slowly, and turned to consider the ocean. He walked a few more steps to the end of the pier, looking out over the water. “Half a lifetime ago, Erik and I worked a job here. We... disagreed on some things.” He paused, expecting her to respond. She didn’t. “I hurt him. He hurt me. _Mutually assured obstruction_ , you might say.”

She found herself wondering if that _disagreement_ had been what marked up the Master’s face. The scars on his face had been so old.

“So, what, you vowed enmity and revenge?” she suggested.

“Hardly. But it did put us on paths that were prone to cross in unexpected and at times negative ways,” he admitted.

“You aren’t giving me a lot of reason to believe you _didn’t_ have Director Hemming assassinated.”

“Oh I assure you, I didn’t have him assassinated.”

She scoffed.

“I did it myself.”

There was a cold, absolute finality to his voice. Empty and devoid of feeling. Like staring out an airlock into space. It didn’t occur to her not to believe him.

If T were here, there was no doubt in her mind that he’d have pulled a gun and shot the man, right then and there.

But T was not here. She stiffened, one hand drifting closer to her belt. Just a foot to the holster. The option wasn’t off the table, but killing Mr. X—satisfying as it would be—wouldn’t prove T’s innocence.

“Oh please do,” he murmured, watching her fingers twitch toward violence. “I’ve had a long life. I’m tired.”

“Why give you the pleasure?” she asked.

“Because if you don’t, I’ll give a kill order to my men.”

He raised a hand, pulling down the cuff of his sleeve and his sportscoat to reveal a silvery band around his wrist. There was a small button on it, and an ominously blinking red light.

“What do you say?” he murmured, raising his finger to hover over the button. “Care to try the odds, Ms. Douglas?”

A hesitated for a moment longer, then pulled her .38 from under her arm. With a grace that absolutely did not match his age, Mr. X ducked under her initial shots. He turned and hopped off the pier, and she ran to the edge. She spotted him speeding away in a dinghy, the sound of the engine almost soundless except for a low rumble swallowed up by the water. He grinned, waving a hand at her even as she lined up another shot. The distance was nearly impossible to hit with any accuracy, but maybe, if she was lucky and the wind was with her...

And then he pressed the button.

She screamed into her mic, abandoning the shot and sprinting back down the pier. “V get _down!”_

“Holy shit!” came through her earpiece as automatic gunfire chattered 50 meters down. In the distance she heard screaming and the crackling static of wood splintering as heavy rounds chewed into the boardwalk, the crates, and the railings. She ran and scanned the head of the pier. There! Gunmen hiding behind the machinery and some of the crates. V had taken cover behind a small wood structure, almost a gazebo. Maybe when the pier had been in use it had been a lemonade shop.

His bike was unattended well out of his reach, the engine guttering and rumbling in a haphazard, bewildered snarl now that it was alone. He hissed out curses, settling on one knee behind the corner of the little building.

“You okay?” he asked. He pulled the .32 out from under his jacket. She could see him trying to line up a shot, but the guns were still firing, bits of wood flying everywhere, and he couldn’t do much more than take a couple quick glances and duck out of sight again.

“Focus, V!” she snapped, and she saw his head—still in the helmet—turn a fraction of an inch as the sound of her boots caught up to him underneath the arrhythmic thumping of the gunfire. “How many?”

“Four,” he reported. “Three with Uzis.”

“I need a distraction.”

“Got it,” he said. He waited for a brief pause as the gunmen began to reload—their foes were clearly not well enough trained to have staggered their fire, which A noted with some relief—and then dove out of his hiding spot, racing to a new position.

There was a frantic shock of noise as the ringleader roared instructions. Somewhere in the back of her mind, A noted it wasn’t English. It was something harsh and grating, probably Slavic or Germanic.

Frantic scuffling ensued as the men dropped their weapons. In the pause she leapt onto the pier railing, vaulting over V’s old spot to the roof of the lemonade stand. She crawled forward until she could just see over the edge, and picked out their four foes.

Three were nondescript. Hired muscle in ski masks and long coats, and for a second she almost— _almost_ —felt bad for them. Courting heat stroke and gunshot wounds at the same time? Brutal. The fourth among them, the leader, was hiding better. He was staying mostly out of sight, even from her better vantage point, sheltering behind the arm of an excavator.

She’d put good money down that was Shatterheart.

A rolled onto her shoulder to get a better stance and bit down the pain. She couldn’t get a clear shot at Shatterheart where he was, so she lined up a shot at the middle of the three. The goons were scrambling for pistols. Better a less effective, loaded weapon than an empty one.

In theory.

“One behind the stack of pallets,” she whispered.

V popped up out of cover, watching the spot she’d mentioned until the ski mask came into view like a prairie dog. V’s gun barked and blood splattered across the boardwalk. By the time the second gunman popped up to take a shot, V was out of sight again, and A put a round directly through one temple, pivoting on her hip to take out the third when he put a round of his own in the roof half a meter from her head.

Shatterheart was the only one left, and finally he leaned out from behind the excavator. He was wearing that Venetian mask again. A ducked to avoid a spray of lead from his automatic.

The sound was wrong for a stationary shot. Shit. He was moving.

She rolled off the roof and hit the boardwalk on the balls of her feet, just in time to see Shatterheart slam the butt end of his Uzi into V’s head. V toppled back, stunned by the blow to his helmet, and then Shatterheart spun to send another cluster of shots her way.

A ducked behind the lemonade stand, but she felt an errant shot catch the right sleeve of her jacket, a line of fire and pain following it as the bullet tore across flesh and hit the railing behind her. _Damn_.

The engine of V’s little motorcycle coughed and roared, and she heard rubber screaming as tires spun and caught against the boards. Shatterheart zoomed by her with a cackling laugh and she swore, stowing her gun as she raced toward her own bike, fishing her keys out of her pocket. She shoved the helmet back over her head and started the bike, cursing furiously until the motor caught. V took a single shot, trying to take out a tire, and then his small hands grabbed her shoulders. As soon as she felt his weight settle over her back tires she gunned the engine, taking off after Shatterheart in a blur of black steel, chrome, and flying sand.

V perched behind her, one arm resting over her shoulders for balance as she swerved and slid, following the dusty track of Shatterheart’s tires until they reached the road.

“K!” V hollered, carefully balancing himself against A’s back as he swapped a fresh magazine into his .32. “Track my bike!”

“On it!” K chirped. A kept her eyes on the road, scanning crowds and parked cars for any sign of where Shatterheart had gone.

There, further ahead. A group of travelers cursing and catching their balance. She banked hard into the alley beyond them and V cursed under his breath, clinging to her back.

“He’s on a direct path for Blackpool Pleasure Beach!” K reported. “Take this left, then straight through the light!”

A did, engine purring and yowling with every hard turn and sudden acceleration. Further ahead she spotted the rollercoasters they’d driven by before. Of course he’d head straight for one of the most crowded spots in Blackpool. Of _course_ he would.

V cursed. “Light’s red!”

“What?” K asked.

There was a frantic sound of keys tapping, and then R’s voice chimed in, low and somehow smug.

“Three, two... one.”

The light flipped, a last car screeching to a stop at the line. A caught sight of the driver’s startled face as they shot by, and then they were gone, tearing up a cobblestone walkway toward the park. Ahead, on their left, Shatterheart emerged from a different alley, trailing a string of pennants that Shatterheart shoved over his head.

He was headed straight for the turnstiles at the entrance. A eased back on her throttle for half a breath, alarmed. There were a couple dozen people in line, and at the sound of the roaring motorbikes most of them turned around, looking for the source of the noise. Shatterheart raised his Uzi again and peppered the entrance with bullets. Some of the guests dove out of the way while others collapsed, screaming high, terrified screams as their brains tried to process fear and physical agony at the same time. Shatterheart tossed the gun aside and revved his engine so hard V cursed at him for misusing his ride, and then he _jumped_ , leaning the bike so hard to the side it went horizontal, bike and rider alike skimming across the steel barricades into the park.

“We’ve got casualties,” V hissed into his mic. “I repeat, civilian casualties.”

“On it!” K said, her voice high and a touch panicked.

L was usually the one on mission support, and while K was good, being good and combat-ready were two very different skillsets. Even if you didn’t have to do the fighting yourself.

Maybe especially if you didn’t.

A scanned the high steel fence around the park. Five meters down, a workman’s ramp led to a rickety chunk of scaffolding. She jerked left and snarled, “ _Hold on!”_

They shot up the ramp and over the scaffold entirely, and for a terrifyingly long instant they were simultaneously flying and falling. She hit the roof of an ice cream stand, sliding, and she angled down until they hit the ground again in a shower of loose shingles. Then they were off again, civilians screaming and diving out of the way of the two bikes. She felt the tension in V’s body as he tried to line up a shot, but the footpaths meandered through the park, and the crowds were still too dense.

A kept her eyes moving constantly, trying to track the bobbing, spiky black head of their target as he dove into and out of crowds, flowing up and down subtly rolling hills. He led them through an open courtyard, slaloming through fountaining jets of water, and V took a single shot, the round pulling up chips of concrete where it struck the ground.

She nearly lost him entirely when Shatterheart pivoted hard past a decorative planter and dove off the main path into the entry hall for a log flume coaster, and again when he swung wide around a Spongebob ride that played unnervingly tinny songs as they flew by.

And then Shatterheart finally made a mistake.

He banked, curving around a popcorn stand and then up a sloping hill that led underneath a coaster’s looming steel spine. There was a car full of people on the ride, swooping down toward the walkway to buzz pedestrians like a strafing jet fighter, but they were too far away up a loop in the track.

Just too high to block a perfect shot.

V stood up, braced his arm across A’s helmet, and fired.

She didn’t quite see what happened, but she saw Shatterheart suddenly jerk forward over the handlebars of V’s bike. The rollercoaster car—full of passengers who were suddenly screaming in fear, rather than just the fun, fake terror of an amusement park—zoomed by in between them. And then it was gone, swinging through the ride’s next loops and drops.

A saw V’s bike go clattering across the cobblestones, riderless, like a runaway horse at a joust.

She pivoted hard at the top of the hill, her tires screaming in protest. V leapt off to corral his bike, and talked rapidly to K about bringing in authorities.

A dismounted at a more leisurely pace. Shatterheart lay on his side in a perfectly coiffed patch of grass blanketed with marigolds and roses. The lower half of his face was bleeding in a few places—he’d rolled across some of the thorns. He was panting for breath, his eyes wide with panic.

She slid the mask off his face. The delicate, stylized falcon’s wings had snapped in his tumble over the bike’s front tire, and once the strap slid loose from behind his ears his head thumped back down onto the grass. Silver gleamed around the curve of his ear, glinting in the sunlight: a punk teenager’s badge of rebellion. Defeated and bleeding like this, he looked young. Fragile, and out of his depth. His face was sheened in sweat from exertion and fear, and the spikes in his hair were starting to droop around his forehead, making him look somehow even smaller than he already did.

For the first time she realized he couldn’t possibly be more than 20. He was probably only V’s age, at best.

God, he was practically a child.

She patted him down for weapons and he groaned, a pitiful, broken sound.

A removed his cell phone, pocketing it to give to K, and retrieved Thomas’ pearl-handled .45 from the interior pocket of his coat.

“Med team’s on the way,” V reported.

She pressed the muzzle of the .45 to Vladimir Serdsov’s forehead and the boy’s breath suddenly picked up, sharp and terrified.

“Whoa, A,” V said, raising a hand, not to actually touch her, but a weak, placating _stop_ gesture.

Without moving the .45 she pulled her helmet off and crouched down beside the boy. “Do you realize how fucked you are?” she whispered to him. He didn’t move, but she saw the way his eyes widened just a little more, that dull amber color of his irises twitching as he forced himself to look toward her. “Do you? Do you even realize how much of a _kindness_ it would be, to kill you right here, right now?”

“A,” V said softly. “You’re bleeding.”

“You have caused so much pain,” she said, and Vladimir actually trembled where he lay in the grass. “But you taught me something once.”

He swallowed, but said nothing.

“Our advancements are born out of strife. Without it we might as well be back in the Stone Age, isn’t that what you said?” His mouth opened, just slightly. She leaned down, so her face was barely a hand’s width from his, the gun still pressed to his forehead, cold steel biting into his skin. “Well here’s what you didn’t know. _Revenge_ belongs in the Stone Age, Vladimir. And you’re _damn_ lucky I know that.”

She stood. Serdsov watched her, still shaking, as she engaged the safety and tucked the .45 into the back of her trousers. Then she climbed back onto her bike. “K.”

“Uh. Yeah?”

“How far off’s the team?”

“Twenty seconds to contact.”

“Good. V,” she said. He looked up at her, startled. “We’re leaving.”


	9. Liverpool

_I’m fine_ , he thought, loudly and with great enthusiasm. _I’m Apollo Justice, and I’m fine._

Apollo leaned against the front of the counsel’s table, rubbing a finger between his eyebrows. The prosecution’s next witness, an agent going by the codename E, had proven himself a frustrating undertaking. He was a scientist, or so he claimed, but he had a curiously toadying manner to him. Which came constantly into conflict with his tendency to talk down his nose at anyone and everyone, excepting the admiralty board.

“I don’t understand,” Apollo said, crossing his arms over his chest. “You said in your earlier statement that you did not approve my client, Mr. Osmond, for active duty after his suspension following the symposium in Bern. Why does his file indicate that he was approved?”

“You are missing the point,” E said. His voice was nasal and pinched, making him sound perpetually as though he had just bitten into a lemon. “That _mine_ is not the final decision.”

Apollo made a mental note to see a dentist once he was back in the States—grinding his teeth so much definitely wasn’t good for him. “Please elaborate.”

“I withheld my approval for Osmond’s reactivation based on several points,” he began, shifting in his chair to cross his legs, with one hand perched on his knee like a professor at lecture. “Firstly, his medical condition.”

For a moment, Apollo allowed himself a kernel of hope. “How so?”

“Osmond was nearly back to his usual physical capabilities,” E said, with a somewhat dubious frown, and that spark of hope abruptly darkened, smothered by terror. “Not quite up to snuff, but getting close. I would say a few more weeks and he would have been ready to begin training again, at which time he would have submitted for a re-evaluation.”

Okay, that could have gone worse.

Apollo swept a hand out to gesture to the man sitting, shackled, just behind him. “So you would say that Mr. Osmond was not up to his usual fighting weight?”

“In a manner of speaking, I suppose, but I would also point out that Osmond is a very capable hand-to-hand fighter. Even at 70%, he is a force to be reckoned with.”

Yep. Yep, there was the worse.

“Ah,” Apollo said, feeling a bit like a heap of unspooled twine. “And the second point, Agent?”

“The second point is perhaps the more pertinent,” E said, studying his fingernails. “His psychological evaluations. My findings indicated that Osmond is prone to fits of violence and risk-taking behavior not well managed on his own.”

“Isn’t that a poor quality in an agent?” Apollo asked, before he could stop himself.

“ _My_ recommendation to the Director,” E added, ignoring Apollo’s question and speaking with a tone of oft-practiced derision. Maybe he’d had this argument with the Director himself. “Was to approve Osmond for duty in a very limited capacity. I believe that Osmond works well with Agent A, his usual partner. Their camaraderie and efficiency is unparalleled elsewhere in the Agency, and she tempers his less useful instincts. I suggested that, if he _must_ be given an assignment before he was cleared physically, he be assigned to work with her, and to work with her _only_. Even though I do not generally approve of assigning teams of agents prone to...” He inhaled slowly and wrinkled up his nose, as if the concept left a bad taste in his mouth. “ _Sexual tension_.”

Apollo glanced over his shoulder at his client. It was hard to say for sure that Thomas was blushing—it blended into his skin—but there was a definite pinkness to the tips of his ears.

Athena gently patted the man’s hand in solidarity.

“So you didn’t believe that Osmond could safely work in the field without Agent A to settle him, is that what you’re saying?”

“That is precisely what I believe, yes,” E said. “I told the Director as much, but it is ultimately the Director’s decision, and he approved Osmond for active duty. But I think that without Agent A’s influence...” E hesitated, considering his words, and some of his aloof affectation dropped. Without it, he seemed worryingly sober. “When he is alone, Osmond is at best, a loose cannon.”

Apollo opened his mouth to ask a new question and distract from that thought, but E was still talking.

“At worst, he is dangerous. To others, certainly, but to himself first and foremost.”


	10. Leigh

“I still think it would be more efficient to focus on this kid’s communication records,” R said, crossing his arms over his chest. He was still in his button-down from the trial, but he’d rolled the sleeves up and tied his hair back so that the buzzed sides were visible, and his coat was elsewhere, somewhere near the door where he didn’t have to look at it. He was sitting on the armchair by the window while K worked on her computer. The bed not covered in electronics had been turned into an impromptu operating table, half of it bearing a meager spread of medical supplies R had picked up from a convenience store. A lay on her back on a folded-up beach towel with her head turned toward the wall, trying not to make any noises as V untied the makeshift bandage a few inches below her shoulder.

“I’ll check them, but if he’s got any sense,” K insisted, “And this Mr. X fellow _definitely_ has sense—nothing on his phone is going to be useful. Everything will be encoded, or said solely in phone calls, or the like. We don’t have time to legally, or even _illegally_ , obtain his phone records. So I’m going to cross-reference his GPS data, see if I can figure out where he was in the last couple days.”

V undid her cufflink and started rolling up her sleeve. A glanced over, noting with some dismay that a huge swatch of the shirt was dyed crimson, and the torn cloth was packed tightly into the cut. It was gonna be an absolute bitch to get all the fibers out. V’s hands trembled, evidently noticing what she had. His thumb brushed the point where the fabric folded into the wound and she gave her best effort not to scream.

“Sorry!” he said, yanking his hands away. “S-sorry.”

“Christ, V,” she breathed, the pain making her stomach churn.

“Here,” R said, tapping V’s shoulder. “I’ll do it.”

V got up a little too eagerly, ducking out of his way. He went to sit near K, focusing on her work rather than watch the first aid.

R’s fingers were callused but his hands were gentle. He slowly rolled up her sleeve to the elbow, then paused. “Ready?” he asked. She forced herself to relax, and nodded. He pried the better part of the cloth free and rolled it higher, then tugged a flashlight and a pair of tweezers out of a pocket she hadn’t even realized he had. You can take the man out of the cargo pants, but you can’t take the cargo pants out of the man.

He began the process of pulling stray fibers from her open wound, and she settled in to endure the wait, putting most of her focus on breathing steadily. Her threshold for pain had always been good, but stacking this new wound on top of the lingering pain in her shoulder and everything else was just fighting dirty.

“Just once,” she said, gritting her teeth as he worked, “I’d like to not get clipped by a bullet.”

“Better than actually getting shot, I’d think. Now, hold still.” R chuckled. He kept his voice low and gentle. “It’s not _quite_ like wiring an exploding pen, but close enough.”

She glanced toward him, catching his eye for a moment. “I trust you, Roland.”

“Nah,” he said, and set aside a few more strands. “Not really, you don’t.”

She opened her mouth, then closed it. “I trust you to help me,” she said instead. “I trust you to help Thomas.”

“I’ll take it,” he murmured, and smiled. “Now don’t move.”

He worked and she listened to the musical percussive beat of K working on her computer. R pulled a dozen more threads out of her arm, then stopped, and she felt him twisting this way and that to check he’d gotten them all. His fingers were surprisingly warm, as if he’d been sitting in the sun all afternoon. Incomprehensibly, it soothed her.

“Hell of a list,” V muttered.

“What’ve you got?” A asked, hissing out a curse as R poured a capful of disinfectant over the gash.

“Coffeshop in Manchester and a junkyard outside town,” K said, “Plus a motel up in Bolton. I’d reckon that’s where he was staying. And then this morning he was in a lab belonging to Second Heart, in St. Helens. Which, as it so happens, is the subsidiary of χ-Corp that handled an urgent and very hush-hush medical autopsy for them.”

“ _Quelle surprise_ ,” A drawled.

“Junkyard?” V asked, bewildered. R threaded a needle and A stopped watching. “Odd choice.”

“Nah,” she said, gritting her teeth when she felt R working along the cut. “Shit. No, that’s not odd. Someone swapped out a bureau drawer in T’s room. I’ll check there.”

“No,” V said, rising from his seat. “Please. Let me do it.”

It wasn’t an overly dangerous job, especially with Serdsov now off the board. Mr. X’s chess game was getting more intense, but he’d lost some key personnel.

“All right,” she said, grunting when R tied off the thread and bandaged her arm. “You check the junkyard.”

V nodded and gathered his weapons.

“Stay on comms,” she said, turning to look over her shoulder at him. “Please.”

“Of course,” he said.

“K,” she said, sitting up once R finished. V slipped outside with a final nod to them. “Can you give me anything on Second Heart?”

K didn’t look up from her screen, but was quiet for maybe twenty seconds. “Jesus, their security is completely out of proportion for what they say they are. Surprise surprise. Sorry A, I’m not getting in unless I go full Bobby Quine... or unless I get a USB on the inside to get into their server the hard way.”

“USB it is,” A said with a sigh, stripping out of her ruined clothing. “R, trade you for your shirt?”

In a new shirt and a new jacket she almost felt human again, even though her arm throbbed dully on every heartbeat and her shoulder ached. She’d taken a few aspirin but elected to avoid stronger painkillers until the job was over. Better a clear head, with pain, than a fuzzy one without.

She took her bike to St. Helens and parked it in the lot for a café half a block away from Second Heart. It was a bitch to have to walk, but at least it was less likely anyone would ID her on approach. She got a cup of tea and a sandwich and sat in a booth near the front wall, watching the road while K did some digging.

“Either they’ve got a secret entrance through a basement,” K said testily, “Or nobody’s there today.”

“Nothing on CCTV?” A asked.

“I’ve gone through hours of footage and I’ve got a load of Jack and Shit,” she reported. “They’re playing a shell game, and I’m losing. _Hard_.”

“And all this time, I thought they were called shell companies because they’re hollow inside,” R quipped. A spat a mouthful of tea back into her cup, stifling a laugh. “I heard that, A. You can’t fool me, you’ve a sense of humor in there somewhere and I know it.”

“Don’t make me laugh, it makes my arm hurt,” she replied.

He made a noise that was half laugh, half sympathetic groan. “Sorry.”

“What else can you tell me?”

“Blueprints for the building aren’t giving me much but those are most certainly faked,” K noted, the puzzled frown audible even in her voice. “Power draw would seem to indicate they’ve got some decent security systems though... whoa, hold the phone.”

“What is it?”

“A, sit tight. I think I’ve got an idea.”

 

Twenty minutes later, A stalked down the sidewalk wearing a new pair of sunglasses from a pharmacy on the corner and the stiff, well-muscled walk of a bodyguard. A stretchy spiral keyring, cut and held in place to the back of her ear with tape, served as a prop. She paused in front of the unmarked front door of Second Heart’s St. Helens Laboratory and scanned the road as if looking for a car before she stepped inside. The front room, as K’s instructions had implied, looked almost like a reception area, but just slightly off. A handful of uncomfortable hospital-style chairs lined one wall, and there was a staff member sitting behind a desk. A lone clock hung by a closed door, in sight of the chairs.

But there were no potted plants, no magazines on the end tables, and the reception desk window was made of bulletproof glass. The “receptionist” was a broad-shouldered, barrel-chested goon with a military haircut and a cheap suit that didn’t do a particularly stellar job of hiding the Sig under his jacket.

A walked to the desk and looked down at the guard.

She said nothing.

Behind her the clock ticked, ominous and heavy in the silence.

The phone on the desk rang, and the guard didn’t break eye contact with her as he answered it.

“Go.”

R’s voice, now making no effort to change his accent, purred a honeyed, Irish lilt in her earpiece. She forced her face not to react, even though she could also hear the soft echo of it where it came through the phone’s handset.

“Is there a problem there, friend? It’s just you’re keepin’ my guard waitin’.”

The guard frowned, looking at A, then down at a list on the desk.

“Mr. McKeane?”

“Who d’ye bloody well _think_ it is, mate,” R purred, the honey dropping out of his voice to be replaced with steel. “You’re wastin’ my time, an’ hers. An’ I really don’ think y’wanna find out what ‘appens when she gets _testy_.”

The guard didn’t look fazed by the threat, but it did seem to satisfy his henchmanly need for villainous propriety. He nodded at her and flicked his head to indicate the other door.

“Right away sir,” he said, and hung up the phone. “Go on through,” he said, clicking a button on the desk. She heard the mechanism buzz, then the lock clicked. She opened the door with a final nod to him.

“Well that didn’t seem so bad,” K said, once the door had shut behind her.

“Could’ve been worse,” A agreed, glancing around and tugging the sunglasses down so she could see. The door led into a darkened hallway lit solely by a long, flickering fluorescent bulb. “R did a good job.”

“Thanks,” he said, his voice back to normal. “Medic and undercover in one afternoon? Better start updating my résumé. Or at least applying for fieldwork compensation.”

A limited herself to a smirk and started down the hall. “Got the layout?”

“Yep,” K said. “Right up here. Second door.”

She followed K’s instructions, winding her way through the bowels of Second Heart’s laboratory and rooms full of archival data. She even passed through a room full of servers—far more than a simple medical subsidiary should have required.

“A,” V said, his voice crackling a little as she got deeper into the building. “Hit the jackpot.”

“What’d you find?” she whispered, creeping through another room.

“The bureau drawer. Set aside in a pile for destruction,” he said. “And you’re not gonna believe this.”

“What?”

“There’s a bullet hole in it.”

She froze, half-hidden behind a rack of cleaning supplies.

“There’s a what?”

“Bullet hole. Big one.”

Her mind was moving a hundred miles an hour.

“Someone _shot_ the Master,” she breathed, understanding. “Through the window. R.”

“Yeah,” he said. “It’s like I thought, then. No fatal stab wound.”

“A,” K murmured. “You _have_ to find something solid.”

She nodded, even though no one could hear it, and continued moving. Finally K’s instructions led her to a partially empty room. Two walls were lined with heavy steel doors, and the whole room was noticeably cooler than the hallway, making her shiver. K gave her a case number and she prowled the corner of the room until she found the correct door.

She inhaled, exhaled, and hauled back on the handle, sliding out the table within. The stench of death and formaldehyde was so thick it almost made her gag, and she pulled back the sheet over the corpse’s face.

“Jesus,” she breathed.

“What?” K said, nervous.

“You okay?” R asked.

A closed her eyes and pushed down her revulsion. “Found the Master.”

Silence filled the channel.

A folded the sheet down to his shoulders. There were a couple red lines—scratches, maybe, where T had tried to hit him during the knife-fight. A smattering of bruises and swelling across his face, shoulders, and arms indicated they’d been fighting hand-to-hand, which matched with T’s story. She kept moving the sheet, until she could see his chest and belly. A messy burst of skin and muscle had been sewn shut. The gunshot wound was grisly, and definitely not the entry point.

“He was shot in the back,” she reported.

Some part of her was aware that she sounded unaffected, even dispassionate. Rage didn’t help her finish the job. She could be angry later. For now, she had to work.

She closed the freezer, consigning the Master to the frozen void.

“There should be a computer nearby,” K said, sounding like she was fighting nausea. “Where they store the results and such. I need to get into that. Shell company or not, it’s a medical subsidiary. If we’re very, _very_ lucky, we’ll find real records, as well as the fakes.”

A scanned the room and found the computer in question. A jiggle of the mouse brought up the main screen. She slid the USB drive K had given her into the side of it and started the program K needed.

“All right, it’ll take a minute or two to get what I need.”

Somewhere nearby she heard footsteps.

“Better hope it’s faster than that,” A said, and slid to the wall beside the door to wait. Each step _thumped_ heavy and loud. She drew her .38 and held her breath.

The door banged open, hard, so hard it hit the opposite wall with a deafening _clank_ , and the guard from the front desk burst into the room. She kicked at his leg, catching the back of his knee, and he staggered. She pressed the .38 to his shoulder.

He didn’t speak. No accusations, no demands. Smart man: he saved his breath.

The guard was so big that even though she’d damaged his knee it only barely slowed him. He twisted and brought one hand up to knock the gun aside and followed it immediately with one big fist toward her head. His size worked against her—he wasn’t as well trained as she was, but if a decent big fighter and a good small fighter go head to head, it gets a little more complicated to say who’ll win.

A ducked under his opening hook and heard his knuckles hit the drywall and buckle it inward. She traded him her own quick jab to the ribs and a stomp to his already-hurt knee but he was already moving, twisting so her boot slid uselessly down his calf. He scored a solid hit to her chest, the blow enough to send her stumbling backward until she hit the wall, just to one side of another freezer handle.

A spun away as he closed again, so that his next punch hit the metal door and left dents. He howled and spun to keep following her, matching each of her quicksteps to a single long stride of his own. He swung for her, over and over, so that she had to keep moving to keep out of range. She couldn’t get the gun up and dodge at the same time, and he knew it.

She spun and pivoted, dodging and sliding just under or around every punch. He was backing her into a corner, but he hadn’t noticed the USB stick, and that was more important.

He barked out a laugh and closed the final distance. She was out of places to go and took a punch to the gut that sent her back against a wall so hard she bounced. His hand found her chest and slid up, his huge fingers clasping around her throat and _lifting_ her, pushing her up the wall until her boots lifted free of the floor. She kicked at him, desperate, but she couldn’t get leverage and he was just so damn _strong_.

“Got you, lyin’ little _bitch_ ,” he said. “You think Mr. X hasn’t circulated your photograph? Cute little trick out front, but we’ve had you since you walked down the block.”

“Well, damn,” she gasped, clawing at his fingers with one hand. The pressure on her throat was unbelievable. “Did he tell you who I am?”

His brow furrowed.

“He should’ve,” she said, and pressed the .38 to his chest just above a rib. “Cuz I’m a _tricky_ lyin’ little bitch.”

His eyes went wide, but she pulled the trigger before he could even start to release her.

The guard collapsed backward in a heap, blood seeping out onto the tile beneath him as she holstered the pistol and straightened her jacket.

“Got it,” K reported. “Get out of there. L says the trial’s not going well.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Almost done...


	11. Liverpool

“You expect me to believe,” Athena insisted, with an emphatic gesture at the court’s most recent witness. Nathalie O’Donnell was the head of the cleaning team that had scrubbed down T’s room, and she was watching Athena with a bewildered frown. “That your team removed _nothing_ from the scene?”

“Yes ma’am,” O’Donnell said. “My team didn’t remove anything. Unless you count bloodstained rags. _Ma’am_.”

_“Take_ _that!”_ Athena barked, swiping a hand to bring up photos on her holo-display of the bloodsplatter Apollo had discovered.

She was hoping for a startled gasp spreading through the gallery, but all she got was a crowd of blank stares. The admiral sitting in the center of the bench glared daggers at her.

If looks could kill, it would be _him_ on trial for murder, not her client.

“If the defense shouts _‘take that’_ in this courtroom _one more time_ ,” he seethed.

“O-of course, Admiral,” she said, with an uncomfortable chuckle, and tugged at her hair. “This bloodsplatter was found in the defendant’s apartment, initially hidden by a bit of curtain.” She grinned. Half of winning was confidence, after all. “My _point_ is, it seems like you missed a spot, Ms. O’Donnell. A spot that has a suspiciously clean line cut into it.” She propped her hands on her hips. “Almost as if a thick stack of paper, or a file folder, had been resting in it and was later _removed from the scene_.”

The cleaner frowned at the photograph. “We cleaned everything we found,” she said, scratching idly at her chin. “That must’ve been there before, and unrelated to the scene.”

“Well that’s interesting,” Athena said, swiping through her display for another bit of evidence. “Because we had the sample tested, and that blood was a match for Director Hemming.”

Now, _finally_ , a murmur swept through the gallery.

“So the question is, _what_ was removed from the scene? O’Donnell, my client’s life should not be at the mercy of your team!”

O’Donnell frowned at her and crossed her arms over her chest. “I hardly think your client’s life is at my team’s _mercy_ , Ms. Cykes,” she said. Athena leaned forward slightly, listening closely. “We didn’t remove anything from the scene.”

Athena expected to hear a hitch in her breath, maybe a racing heartbeat, but there was... nothing. She glanced over her shoulder to Apollo, who gave her a dismal frown.

Dammit. O’Donnell was being honest.

“Well then,” Athena said, trying to wrangle down her nerves, “How do you explain the blood?”

“Guess you’re right,” O’Donnell said. “I guess we missed a spot.”

“But,” Athena said, and she could _feel_ the admiral staring at her even without looking at him. “But, uh, but! You can surely agree that this means the blood here was left at the time of the murder?”

O’Donnell considered the photograph again, then shrugged. “I suppose. I’m not a crime scene technician.”

“But if the blood was left at the time of the crime that means whatever left that edge was also removed at the time of the murder. Or at minimum, between the time of the murder and the time your team entered the room.”

“I suppose.”

“Then you—”

“Is the Defense _quite_ finished wasting the court’s time,” the admiral growled.

“I’m not wasting time!”

He rested his chin on his hand. “Then please, elucidate to the court why I should allow this line of inquiry.”

“Because,” Athena said, panicking and swiping through her records. “Because something else was removed from the room too!”

The admiral frowned at her. “And what would that be, Ms. Cykes?”

“The, uh, one of the... drawers!”

“One of the _drawers?”_ the admiral scoffed.

“What?” Thomas asked from behind her. “Someone replaced it? What are you talking about?”

She turned, startled to hear him pipe up. “W-well it’s just—”

“This is irrelevant,” the admiral said, speaking over her. He slammed a hand against his table, making Athena jump. “Ms. O’Donnell, leave the stand.”

“N-no!” she said, turning around again. “I’m not done with my cross-examination!”

“Yes, you are,” the admiral said.

O’Donnell left the stand.

The admiral laced his fingers together. “Does the prosecution intend to call further witnesses?”

“The prosecution has no further relevant testimony,” Mr. Ashoka drawled, rising smoothly from his seat. “We believe we have proved all we need to prove.”

“Very well.”

“Admiral!” Athena protested, stepping forward.

“The defense will take their _seats_ while the board withdraws to discuss our verdict.”

She heard footsteps outside, and then the creak of the hinges as the door opened. She turned, and the admiralty board turned to look also.

Athena blinked. Artemis—no, Agent A—stood in the doorway with a young blonde man standing just behind her. She was holding a stack of papers; he cradled a tattered, bloodstained bureau drawer in his arms, with a large hole in the front panel.

“This is a closed session,” the admiral snapped. “Who—”

“Agent Douglas, sir,” Agent A said, introducing herself. “And Agent Sparks.”

“What is the meaning of this?”

“We’ve obtained some evidence that has been, by direct and deliberate subterfuge, excluded from the court’s attention in regard to this case. Evidence that proves someone has been trying to make sure this case plays out the way _they_ want it to, rather than subjecting it to the fair and equal rule of military law.”

Thomas started to stand, but Apollo pulled him back down into his chair. “A, don’t—”

The admiral looked borderline apoplectic, but he narrowed his eyes and watched as A came down the aisle, stopping at the low railing separating the gallery from the counsel tables. He tapped his fingers on the bench, and glanced to the other admirals sitting beside him.

He faced A, his voice frosty with obvious displeasure and suspicion.

“ _What_ evidence?”


	12. Epilogue: Manchester

T sat on the sofa in A’s flat in one of his astonishingly tight t-shirts and a pair of jeans. His shoulder was still bandaged, where the Director had stabbed him, but he was finally mending now that he was actually getting the care he needed, and he looked better. He looked _good_ , even. She sat near him, nestled in the arm of the couch with her knees up and her heels perched on the cushion. It felt good to just sit with him, now that he was really, truly free.

His lawyers sat across from him on a loveseat, snacking on crackers as they reviewed the tribunal’s findings. T knew the lion’s share, having been at the session, but outsiders had been strictly prohibited from attending, and A had resigned herself to sitting in her flat to wait for news.

“The results from the Agency-led autopsy came back, which was the clincher,” Athena was saying, offering her a piece of paper. “GSW to the lower back. Bullet wasn’t recovered but the ballistics based on the size of the entry wound, exit wound, and the damage to the bureau drawer was indicative of a high-powered rifle round. Which was consistent with a number of military sniper rifles.”

“The damage Thomas dealt to the Director during the fight,” Apollo added, nodding to T, “Also wasn’t deemed sufficient enough to have implicated him for anything like manslaughter or reckless endangerment, either.”

“Good.” A nodded, trying on instinct not to let much of her relief come through in her voice. “That’s good.”

“They haven’t recovered the file that was removed from my room,” T added. A stormy scowl took over his face. “Serdsov’s given them some information to barter for better treatment, but he either didn’t know, or won’t divulge, what happened to that file. But, still, they _have_ mostly taken me at my word that the Director had approved V for duty. Whoever replaces the Director will be given that advice for when he or she makes a final call on him. So he should be fine.”

“They wouldn’t talk about who might replace him while we were in the room, of course, but it’s also worth noting that no one’s certain who shot him, and it sounds like they’re nervous of promoting someone who might’ve staged this whole thing,” Athena added. “I mean they have some theories on where the sniper would have been set up, but... obviously the trail’s far too old to determine with confidence _who_ it might have been.”

“No one would expect the truth, and Mr. X will have more than covered his tracks by now,” A said with a sigh.

Apollo grimaced, and nodded. “Unfortunately it’s really looking like this case will get dropped.”

“It’ll probably stay on the Agency’s radar,” T noted, glancing sideways at her. “The admirals are pretty pissed about the whole affair, obviously, both that he was murdered and that they tried to frame me. But... until more evidence crops up, they’ll treat χ-Corp as a credible but non-immediate threat.” He scoffed. “You know what they’re like.”

“Hell,” A said, rubbing her arm. The cut was healing, but it itched horrendously under the bandaging. “For all we know they’re _not_ an immediate threat. Maybe now that the Director is gone, Mr. X is done.”

T looked at her, and she let her mouth twist in a wry frown.

Yeah... neither of them believed that, not for a second.

Apollo blew out a breath and set his hands on his knees. “Well, as much as this has been fun,” he said, trailing off meaningfully.

“We should get going,” Athena agreed, rising from her chair and stretching. “Our flight leaves in a few hours.”

T got up and shook each of their hands as they started gathering up their things. “Thank you. Both of you.”

“It’s our pleasure,” Athena said.

Apollo grimaced at her. “It’s also our _job_.”

“Don’t worry,” A said, grinning. “L already wired you your payment.”

They blinked at her.

“What?”

Athena looked like she might be about to cry. “I can’t remember the last time we got paid on time,” she whispered.

“We might need to take on jobs with dubious foreign intelligence agencies more often,” Apollo said, leaning over to shake A’s hand.

“And to think you didn’t _want_ to take this case at the start,” Athena said, laughing. She circled around to lean down and hug A where she sat. “Hopefully we don’t have to be in contact again,” she said.

“But if we do, it’ll be good to see you again,” A said, offering her a small, honest smile.

“Definitely.”

T saw them out to their car, and when he came back up to A’s flat she was sprawled the long way across her couch, cradling her arm against her chest and resting the other over her eyes.

“You look beat,” he said.

“Stress is catching up,” she admitted.

“And you haven’t taken any painkillers today.”

She lifted her arm enough to shoot him an offended frown. “How is it you know me so well.”

“Practice,” he murmured, and leaned down to press a brief, warm kiss to her mouth. God, she’d missed it. She started to lean up to follow him when he pulled back, and he grinned, pushing her back down with one hand. “I’ll be right back.”

“Bring the bottle,” she muttered as he headed toward her kitchen to fetch a glass of water and a handful of pills. He laughed, and despite herself, despite _everything_ , it made her smile. When he came back and pulled her up so she could take the pills, he sat down in her spot, arranging himself where she could rest with her back against his chest, her head tucked under his chin.

Somewhere out there, Mr. X was scheming. She’d stolen his head goon after all, not to mention stopping his scheme and directly defying his threats not to get involved. She didn’t think for a second that he’d let her get away with that.

But at least for now, he couldn’t take this away from her. Peace, and quiet, and a warm, solid body under hers, resting in the early afternoon sun angling through her flat’s windows.

“You know,” she murmured, tilting her head back to look up at him. “Maybe this whole thing is a sign it’s time to get out. You know, while the getting’s good.”

He laughed, and she felt the low rumble of it all through her spine and shoulders. He trailed his hand along her arm until he could tangle his fingers into hers. “Suppose you’ve got a point. It’s a young man’s game.”

“It is,” she agreed, “And full of injuries that are gonna catch up to us sooner than later.”

“Not to mention politically dangerous. I almost ended up in jail, after all.”

“Mmhm,” she said.

“What would we do instead?”

“Haven’t the foggiest,” she said. “But the Agency paid well, it’s not like we haven’t got enough saved up.”

“Are you suggesting we’ll buy a house in the country and invest all the rest?” He chuckled and kissed the top of her head. “Take up gardening and woodworking and making catty comments about our neighbors as we watch them through the blinds? Be perpetually unemployed and ride the markets till we’re old and grey?”

She reached back and poked his shoulder. “Come now, you know full well you’ll be a dignified silver fox well into your 70s.”

“Ha!” he scoffed. “Please, you’ll look far better than I will.”

She chuckled, but then the mirth faded. “Only if we live that long.”

He hummed, considering that. “True.”

“What do you think?”

He was quiet for a while, thinking. “I think that you’re nervous, and rightly so, but... you don’t want out. Not really.”

She hissed out a breath. She wasn’t sure what was more frustrating: that he knew her so well as to know it without hesitation, or that he was right.

“And neither do I,” he admitted, his lips resting against her head. “Maybe someday. But not now.”

“Damn us both then,” she muttered, and let her head rock back onto his shoulder with a sigh. “Suppose we’ll never be anything but ourselves. Nothing changes.”

“Mm, perhaps not,” he said, and looked down at her. His eyes tracked across her face, then down to her throat and the collar of her shirt. He lifted his hand, catching the chain of his necklace with one finger. “Though I’m glad you started wearing this.”

“Sorry I stole it.”

“No you’re not,” he said with a laugh. “And anyway, it looks better on you than it ever did on me. Keep it.”

“Thomas.”

“Mm?”

“Shut up.”

“As you say, ma’am,” he murmured, and leaned down to kiss her again.


End file.
